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YOUNG MEN AND BOYS 




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ADVICE 



TO 



YOUNG MEN AND BOYS 



A SERIES OF ADDRESSES 



DELIVERED BY B. B. COMEGYS 

MEMBER OF THE BOARD OF CITY TRUSTS OF PHILADELPHIA 



TO THE PUPILS OF THE GIRARD COLLEGE 



ILLUSTRATED WITH 

Six Photogravure Portraits on Steel, 



PHILADELPHIA 

GEBBIE & CO., Publishers 

1890 



X 




0^ 



Copyright by 

Gebbie & Co., 

1889. 



PREFACE. 



TN January, 1882, I was appointed by the Judges 
of the Courts of Common Pleas of Philadelphia 
to the Board of Directors of City Trusts, which has 
charge of Girard College, having for some years pre- 
viously, by the kind partiality of President Allen, 
been on the staff of speakers in the Chapel on Sun- 
days. My interest in the Pupils was of course at 
once increased, and ever since I have given much 
time and thought to the moral instruction of the 
boys. 

From the many Addresses made to them I 
have selected the following as fair specimens of 
the instruction I have sought to impart. Some 
repetitions of thought and language may be ac- 
counted for by the lapse of time between the giv- 
ing of the Addresses, not forgetting the well-known 
Hebrew proverb, " Line upon line — precept upon 
precept — here a little — there a little." 

(5) 



£ PREFACE. 

The word "Orphans" as used in the will of Mr. 
Girard has been defined by the Supreme Court of 
Pennsylvania to mean boys who are fatherless. 

The book is published in the hope that it may 
be the means of helping some boys and young 
men other than those to whom the Addresses 
were made. 

4205 Walnut St., 

November, 1889. 



CONTENTS, 



Stephen Glrard and his College. (Introductory) 
How to win Success .... 
Life— Its Opportunities and Temptations 
On the Death of William Welsh 

Bad Associates 

On the Death of President Garfield 
The Case of the Uneducated Employed 

William Penn 

Our Constitution 

James Lawrence Claghorn . 
The Leaf Turned Over 
Thanksgiving Day. (November 29, 1888) 
On the Death of President Allen 
A Young Man's Message to Boys 
A Truthful Character 



page 9 

25 

39 

51 

59 

69 

79 

99 

113 

129 

143 

155 

169 

179 

188 



(7) 



LIST OF PHOTOGRAVURE ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Stephen Glrard Frontispiece^ 

B. B. Comegys * . PAGE 25 

William Welsh "51 

James A. Garfield . . ■. . . . " 69 

James Lawrence Claghorn "129 

William Henry Allen " 169 



(8) 



STEPHEN GIRARD AND HIS COLLEGE.* 

INTRODUCTORY. 

Stephen Girard, who calls himself in his will 
" mariner and merchant," was born near the city of 
Bordeaux, France, on May 20, 1750. At the age of 
twenty-six he settled in Philadelphia, having his 
counting house on Water street, above Market. 
He was a man of great industry and frugality, and 
lived comfortably, as the merchants of that day 
lived, in the dwelling of which his counting-house 
formed a part. He was married and had one child, 
but the death of his wife was followed soon by the 
death of his child, and he never married again. He 
lived to the age of eighty-one and accumulated what 
was considered at the time of his death a vast estate, 
more than seven millions of dollars. One hun- 
dred and forty thousand dollars of this was be- 
queathed to members of his family, sixty-five thou- 
sand as a principal sum for the payment of annuities 
to certain friends and former employes, one hundred 
and sixteen thousand to various Philadelphia chari- 

* This introduction is taken by permission from " The Life and Character 
of Stephen Girard, by Henry Atlee Ingram, LL. B." 



10 STEPHEN GIRARD AND HIS COLLEGE. 

ties, five hundred thousand to the city of Philadel- 
phia for the improvement of its water front on the 
Delaware, three hundred thousand to the State of 
Pennsylvania for the prosecution of internal improve- 
ments, and an indefinite sum in various legacies to his 
apprentices, to sea-captains who should bring his ves- 
sels in their charge safely to port, and to his house 
servants. The remainder of his estate he devised in 
trust to the city of Philadelphia for the following 
purposes : (1) To erect, improve and maintain a 
college for poor white orphan boys ; (2) to establish 
a better police system, and (3) to improve the city 
of Philadelphia and diminish taxation. 

The sum of two millions of dollars was set apart 
by his will for the construction of the college, and 
as soon as was practicable the executors appropriated 
certain securities for the purpose, the actual outlay 
for erection and finishing of the edifice being one 
million nine hundred and thirty-three thousand eight 
hundred and twenty-one dollars and seventy-eight 
cents ($1,933,821.78). Excavation was commenced 
May 6, 1833, the corner-stone being laid with cere- 
monies on the Fourth of July following, and the 
completed buildings were transferred to the Board of 
Directors on the 13th of November, 1847. There 
was thus occupied in construction a period of four- 
teen years and six months, the work being somewhat 
delayed by reason of suits brought by the heirs of 
Girard against the city of Philadelphia to recover the 



STEPHEN GIRARD AND HIS COLLEGE. ]_]_ 

estate. The design adopted was substantially that 
furnished by Thomas U. Walters, an architect elected 
by the Board of Directors. Some modifications were 
rendered advisable by the change of site directed in 
the second codicil of Girard's will, the original pur- 
pose having been to occupy the square bounded by 
Eleventh, Chestnut, Twelfth and Market streets, in 
the heart of the city of Philadelphia. But Girard 
having, subsequently to the first draft of his will, 
purchased for thirty-five thousand dollars the Wil- 
liam Parker farm of forty-five acres, on the Ridge 
Road, known as the " Peel Hall Estate," he directed 
that the site of his college should be transferred to 
that place, and commenced the erection of stores and 
dwellings upon the former plot of ground, which 
dwellings and stores form part of his residuary 
estate. 

The college proper closely resembles in design a 
Greek temple. It is built of marble, which was 
chiefly obtained from quarries in Montgomery and 
Chester counties, Pennsylvania, and at Egremont, 
Massachusetts. 

The building is three stories in height, the first 
and second being twenty-five feet from floor to floor, 
and the third thirty feet in the clear to the eye of 
the dome, the doors of entrance being in the north 
and south fronts and measuring sixteen feet in width 
and thirty-two in height. The walls of the cella 
are four feet in thickness, and are pierced on each 



12 STEPHEN GIRARD AND HIS COLLEGE. 

flank by twenty windows. At each end of the 
building is a vestibule, extending across the whole 
width of the cella, the ceilings of which are sup- 
ported on each floor by eight columns, whose shafts 
are composed of a single stone. Those on the first 
floor are Ionic, after the temple on the Ilissus, at 
Athens ; on the second, a modified Corinthian, after 
the Tower of Andronicus Cyrrhestes, also at Athens ; 
and on the third, a similar modification of the 
Corinthian, somewhat lighter and more ornate. 

The auxiliary buildings include a chapel of white 
marble, dormitories, offices and laundries. A new 
refectory, containing improved ranges and steam 
cooking apparatus, has recently been added, the din- 
ing-hall of which will seat with ease more than one 
thousand persons. Two bathing-pools are in the 
western portion of the grounds, and others in base- 
ments of buildings. The houses are heated by steam 
and lighted by gas obtained from the city works. 
Thirty-five electric lights from seven towers one hun- 
dred and twenty-five feet high illuminate the grounds 
and the neighboring streets. A wall sixteen inches 
in thickness and ten feet in height, strengthened by 
spur piers on the inside and capped with marble coping, 
surrounds the whole estate, its length being six thou- 
sand eight hundred and forty-three feet, or somewhat 
more than one and one-quarter miles. It is pierced 
on the southern side, immediately facing the south 
front of the main building, for the chief entrance. 



STEPHEN GIRARD AND HIS COLLEGE. \% 

this last being flanked by two octagonal white marble 
lodges, between which stretches an ornamental 
wrought-iron grille, with wrought-iron gates, the 
whole forming an approach in keeping with the large 
simplicity of the college itself. 

The site upon which the college is erected cor- 
responds well with its splendor and importance. It 
is elevated considerably above the general level of the 
surrounding buildings and forms a conspicuous object, 
not only from the higher windows and roofs in every 
part of Philadelphia, but from the Delaware river 
many miles below the city and from eminences far 
out in the country. From the lofty marble roof the 
view is also exceedingly beautiful, embracing the 
city and its environs for many miles around and the 
course, to their confluence, eight miles below, of the 
Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. 

The history of the institution commences shortly 
after the decease of Girard, when the Councils of 
Philadelphia, acting as his trustees, elected a Board 
of Directors, which organized on the 18th of Feb- 
ruary, 1833, with Nicholas Biddle as chairman. A 
Building Committee was also appointed by the City 
Councils on the 21st of the following March, in whom 
was vested the immediate supervision of the con- 
struction of the college, an office in which they con- 
tinued without intermission until the final completion 
of the structure. 

On the 19th of July, 1836, the former body, hav- 



14 STEPHEN GIKARD AND HIS COLLEGE. 

ing previously been authorized by the Councils so to 
do, proceeded to elect Alexander Dallas Bache presi- 
dent of the college, and instructed him to visit 
various similar institutions in Europe, and purchase 
the necessary books and apparatus for the school,, 
both of which he did, making an exhaustive report 
upon his return in 1838. It was then attempted to 
establish schools without awaiting the completion of 
the main building, but competent legal advice being 
unfavorable to the organization of the institution 
prior to that time, the idea was abandoned, and dif- 
ficulties having meanwhile arisen between the Coun- 
cils and the Board of Directors, the ordinances 
creating the board and authorizing the election of 
the president were repealed. 

In June, 1847, a new board was appointed, to 
whom the building was transferred, and on December 
15, 1847, the officers of the institution were elected, 
the Hon. Joel Jones, President Judge of the District 
Court for the City and County of Philadelphia, being 
chosen as president. On January 1, 1848, the col- 
lege was opened with a class of one hundred orphans, 
previously admitted, the occasion being signalized by 
appropriate ceremonies. On October 1 of the same 
year one hundred more were admitted, and on April 
1, 1849, an additional one hundred, since when 
others have been admitted as vacancies have oc- 
curred or to swell the number as facilities have in- 



STEPHEN GIRARD AND HIS COLLEGE. 1 5 

creased. The college now (1889) contains thirteen 
hundred and seventy-five pupils. 

On June 1, 1849, Judge Jones resigned the office 
of president of the college, and on the 23d of the 
following November William H. Allen, LL. D., Pro- 
fessor of Mental Philosophy and English Literature 
in Dickinson College, was elected to fill the vacancy. 
He was installed January 1, 1850, but resigned De- 
cember 1, 1862, and Major Richard Somers Smith, 
of the United States army, was chosen to fill his 
place. Major Smith was inaugurated June 24, 1863, 
and resigned in September, 1867, Dr. Allen being 
immediately re-elected and continuing in office until 
his death, on the 29th of August, 1882. 

The present incumbent, Adam H. Fetterolf, Ph.D., 
LL. D., was elected December 27, 1882, by the 
Board of City Trusts. This Board is composed of 
fifteen members, three of whom — the Mayor and the 
Presidents of Councils — are ex officio, and twelve are 
appointed by the Judges of the Court of Common 
Pleas. Its meetings are held on the second Wednes- 
day of each month. 

It has been determined by the courts of Pennsyl- 
vania that any child having lost its father is properly 
denominated an orphan, irrespective of whether the 
mother be living or not. This construction has been 
adopted by the college, the requirements for admis- 
sion to the institution being prescribed by Mr. 
Girard's will as follows : (1) The orphan must be a 



15 STEPHEN GIRARD AND HIS COLLEGE. 

poor white boy, between six and ten years of age, no 
application for admission being received before the 
former age, nor can he be admitted into the college 
after passing his tenth birthday, even though the 
application has been made previously; (2) the 
mother or next friend is required to produce the 
marriage certificate of the child's parents (or, in its 
absence, some other satisfactory evidence of such 
marriage), and also the certificate of the physician 
setting forth the time and place of birth ; (3) a form 
of application looking to the establishment of the 
child's identity, physical condition, morals, previous 
education and means of support, must be filled in, 
signed and vouched for by respectable citizens. Ap- 
plications are made at the office, No. 19 South 
Twelfth street, Philadelphia. 

A preference is given under Girard's will to (a) 
orphans born in the city of Philadelphia ; (b) those 
born in any other part of Pennsylvania ; (c) those 
born in the city of New York; (d) those born in the 
city of New Orleans. The preference to the orphans 
born in the city of Philadelphia is defined to be 
strictly limited to the old city proper, the districts 
subsequently consolidated into the city having no 
rights in this respect over any other portion of the 
State. 

Orphans are admitted, in the above order, strictly 
according to priority of application, the mother or 
next friend executing an indenture binding the 



STEPHEN GIRARD AND HIS COLLEGE. yj 

orphan to the city of Philadelphia, as trustee under 
Girard's will, as an orphan to be educated and pro- 
vided for by the college. The seventh item of the 
will reads as follows: 

" The orphans admitted into the college shall be 
there fed with plain but wholesome food, clothed with 
plain but decent apparel (no distinctive dress ever to 
be worn), and lodged in a plain but safe manner. 
Due regard shall be paid to their health, and to this 
end their persons and clothes shall be kept clean, 
and they shall have suitable and rational exercise 
and recreation. They shall be instructed in the 
various branches of a sound education, comprehend- 
ing reading, writing, grammar, arithmetic, geography, 
navigation, surveying, practical mathematics, astron- 
omy, natural, chemical, and experimental philosophy, 
the French and Spanish languages (I do not forbid, 
but I do not recommend the Greek and Latin lan- 
guages), and such other learning and science as the 
capacities of the several scholars may merit or war- 
rant. I would have them taught facts and things, 
rather than words or signs. And especially, I desire, 
that by every proper means a pure attachment to our 
republican institutions, and to the sacred rights of 
conscience, as guaranteed by our happy constitutions, 
shall be formed and fostered in the minds of the 
scholars." 

Although the orphans reside permanently in the 
college, they are, at stated times, allowed to visit 



2g STEPHEN GIRARD AND HIS COLLEGE. 

their friends at their houses and to receive visits 
from their friends at the college. The house- 
hold is under the care of a matron, an assistant 
matron, prefects and governesses, who superintend 
the moral and social training of the orphans and 
administer the discipline of the institution when the 
scholars are not in the school-rooms. The pupils are 
divided into sections, for the purposes of discipline, 
having distinct officers, buildings and playgrounds. 

The schools are taught chiefly in the main college 
building, five professors and forty eight teachers being 
employed in the duties of instruction ; and the course 
comprises a thorough English commercial education, 
to which has been latterly added special schools of 
technical instruction in the mechanical arts. As a 
large proportion of the orphans admitted into the col- 
lege have had little or no preparatory education, the 
instruction commences with the alphabet. 

The order of daily exercises is as follows: the 
pupils rise at six o'clock ; take breakfast at half-past 
six. Kecreation until half-past seven ; then assemble 
in the section rooms at that hour and proceed to the 
chapel for morning worship at eight. The chapel 
exercises consist of singing a hymn, reading a chapter 
from the Old or New Testament, and prayer, after 
the conclusion of which the pupils proceed to the 
various school-rooms, where they remain, with a re- 
cess of fifteen minutes, until twelve. From twelve 
until the dinner-hour, which is half-past twelve, they 



STEPHEN GIRAKD AND HIS COLLEGE. ^O, 

are on the play-ground, returning there after finish- 
ing that meal until two o'clock, the afternoon school- 
hour, when they resume the school exercises, remain- 
ing without intermission until four o'clock. At four 
the afternoon service in the chapel is held, after 
•which they are on the play-ground until six, at which 
hour supper is served. The evening study hour lasts 
from seven to eight, or half-past eight, varying with 
the age of the pupils, the same difference being ob- 
served in their bedtimes, which are from half-past 
seven for the youngest until a quarter before nine for 
the older boys. 

On Sunday the pupils assemble in their section 
rooms at nine o'clock in the morning and at two in 
the afternoon for reading and religious instruction, 
and at half-past ten o'clock in the morning and at 
three in the afternoon they attend divine worship in 
the chapel. Here the exercises are similar to those 
held on week days, with the important addition of an 
appropriate discourse adapted to the comprehension 
of the pupils. The services in the chapel, whether 
on Sundays or on week days, are invariably con- 
ducted by the president or other layman, the will of 
the founder forbidding the entrance of clergymen of 
any denomination whatsoever within the boundaries 
of the institution. 

The discipline of the college is administered 
through admonition, deprivation of recreation, and 
seclusion ; but in extreme cases corporal punishment 



20 STEPHEN GIRARD AND HIS COLLEGE. 

may be inflicted by order of the president and in his 
presence. If by reason of misconduct a pupil be- 
comes an unfit companion for the rest, the "Will says 
he shall not be permitted to remain in the college. 

The annual cost per capita of maintaining, cloth- 
ing and educating each pupil, including current re- 
pairs to buildings and furniture and the maintenance 
of the grounds, is about three hundred dollars. Be- 
tween the ase of fourteen and eighteen years the 
scholars may be indentured by the institution, on be- 
half of " the city of Philadelphia," to learn some "art, 
trade, or mystery," until their twenty-first year, con- 
sulting, as far as is judicious, the inclination and 
preference of the scholar. The master to whom an 
apprentice is bound agrees to furnish him with suffi- 
cient meat, drink, apparel, washing and lodging at 
his own place of residence (unless otherwise agreed 
to by the parties to the indenture and so indorsed 
upon it) ; to use his best endeavors to teach and in- 
struct the apprentice in his " art, trade, or mystery," 
and at the expiration of the apprenticeship to furnish 
him with at least two complete suits of clothes, one 
of which shall be new. Should, however, a scholar 
not be apprenticed by the institution, he must leave 
the college upon attaining the age of eighteen years. 
In case of death his friends have the privilege of 
removing his body for interment, otherwise his re- 
mains are placed in the college burial lot at Laurel 
Hill Cemetery, near Philadelphia. 



STEPHEN GIRARD AND HIS COLLEGE. 21 

Citizens and strangers provided with a permit are 
allowed to visit the college on the afternoon of every 
week day. Permits can be obtained from the Mayor 
of Philadelphia, at his office ; from a Director ; at the 
office of the Board of City Trusts, No. 19 South 
Twelfth street, Philadelphia, or at the office of the 
Public Ledger newspaper. Especial courtesy is shown 
^11 foreign visitors, and particularly those interested 
in educational matters. 

In December, 1831, Mr. Girard was attacked by 
influenza, which was then epidemic in the city. The 
violence of the disease greatly prostrated him, and, 
pneumonia supervening, it became at once apparent 
that he could not live. He had no fear of death. 
About a month before this attack he had said : 
" When Death comes for me he will find me busy, 
unless I am asleep in bed. If I thought I was going 
to die to-morrow I should plant a tree, nevertheless, 
to-day." 

He died in the back room of his Water street 
mansion on December 26th, aged eighty-one years (or 
nearly), and four days after he was buried in the 
churchyard at the northwest corner of Sixth and 
Spruce streets. 

For twenty years the remains reposed undisturbed 
where they had been laid in the churchyard of the 
Holy Trinity Church ; when, the Girard College hav- 
ing been completed, it was resolved that the remains 



of the donor should be transferred to the marble sar- 
cophagus provided in its vestibule. This was done 
with appropriate ceremonies on September 30, 1851. 

Girard's great ambition was, firsts success ; and this 
attained, the -longing of mankind to leave a shining 
memory merged his purpose in the establishment of 
what was to him that fairest of Utopias — the simple 
tradition of a citizen. A citizen whose public duties 
ended not with the State, and whose benefactions 
were not limited to the rescue or advancement of its 
interests alone, but whose charities broadened be- 
yond the limits of duty or the boundaries of an in- 
dividual life, to stretch over long reaches of the 
future, enriching thousands of poor children in hi& 
beloved city yet unborn. His life shows clearly why 
he worked, as his death showed clearly the fixed 
object of his labor in acquisition. While he was 
forward with an apparent disregard of self, to expose 
his life in behalf of others in the midst of pestilence, 
to aid the internal improvements of the country, and 
to promote its commercial prosperity by all the means 
within his power, he yet had more ambitious designs. 
He wished to hand himself down to immortality by 
the only mode that was practicable for a man in 
his position, and he accomplished precisely that 
which was the grand aim of his life. He wrote his 
epitaph in those extensive and magnificent blocks^ 
and squares which adorn the streets of his adopted 
:: \ in the public works and eleemosynary estab- 



STEPHEN GIRARD AND HIS COLLEGE. 23 

lishments of his adopted State, and erected his own 
monument and embodied his own principles in a 
marble-roofed palace. Yet, splendid as is the struc- 
ture which stands above his remains, the most perfect 
model of architecture in the New World, it yields 
in beauty to the moral monument. The benefactor 
sleeps among the orphan poor whom his bounty is 
constantly educating. 

" Thus, forever present, unseen but felt, he daily 
stretches forth his invisible hands to lead some 
friendless child from ignorance to usefulness. And 
when, in the fullness of time, many homes have been 
made happy, many orphans have been fed, clothed 
and educated, and many men made useful to their 
country and themselves, each happy home or rescued 
child or useful citizen will be a living monument 
to perpetuate the name and embalm the memory of 
the ' Mariner and Merchant.' " 



BOARD OF DIRECTORS 



OF 



CITY TRUSTS, 

1889. 



W. HEYWARD DRAYTON, President, 
Ex- Officio Member of all Standing Committees. 

LOUIS WAGNER, Vice-President 

ALEXANDER BIDDLE, WILLIAM L. ELKINS, 

JAMES CAMPBELL, WILLIAM B. MANN, 

JOSEPH L. CAYEN, JOHN H. MICHENER, 

BENJAMIN B. COMEGYS, GEORGE H. STUART, 

JOHN H. CONVERSE, RICHARD VAUX. 

MEMBERS OF THE BOARD " EX OFFICIO : " 

EDWIN H. FITLER, Mayor. 

JAMES E. GATES, President Select Council. 

WILLIAM M. SMITH, President Common Council. 



F. CARROLL BREWSTER, Solicitor. 

FRANK M. HIGHLEY, Secretary. 

JOHN S. BOYD, M.D., Supt. Admission and Indentures. 

(24) 




W . (l '■/>/// ft/ ', 



HOW TO WIN SUCCESS. 

May 27, 18S8. 

I wish to speak to you to-day about some of the 
plainest duties of life — of what you must be, of what 
you must do, if you would be good men and succeed. 

It would be strange if one who has lived as long 
as I have should not have learned something worth 
knowing and worth telling to those who are younger 
and less experienced. I have had much to do with 
young people here and elsewhere, and I have seen 
many failures, much disappointment, many wrecks 
of character, and have learned many things; and I 
speak to you to-day in the hope that I may say such 
things as will help some boy, at least one, to deter- 
mine, while he is here this morning, to do the best he 
can, each for himself, as well as for others. My re- 
marks are particularly appropriate to those just about 
to leave the college. 

It is convenient for me to consider the whole sub- 
ject— 

1. As to health. 

2. As to improvement of the mind. 

3. As to business or work of any kind. 

(25) 



26 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

4. As to your duties to other people. 

5. As to your duty to God. 

1. As to health. You cannot be happy without 
good health, and you cannot expect to have good 
health unless you observe certain conditions. You 
must keep your person cleanly by bathing, when that 
is within reach, or by other simple methods (such as 
a common brush) which are always within your 
reach. Be as much in the open air as possible. This 
is, of course, to those whose work is within doors and 
sedentary, such as that of a clerk in any shop or of- 
fice. Pure, fresh air is Nature's own provision for 
the well-being of all her creatures, and is the best of 
all tonics. 

Be careful of your diet ; for it is not good to eat 
food that is too highly seasoned or too rich. Don't 
be afraid of fruit in season and when it is ripe. But 
don't eat much late at night. Late hot suppers are 
apt to do great harm. The plain, wholesome food 
provided here, accounts for the extraordinarily good 
health which almost all of you enjoy. 

Have nothing whatever to do with intoxicating 
drinks. And the only way to be absolutely safe is 
not to drink even a little, or once in a while. Don't 
drink at all. 

Be sure you get plenty of sleep. Be in bed not 
later than eleven o'clock, and, better still, at ten. A 
young fellow who goes to work at seven o'clock in 
the morning can't afford to keep late hours. Young 



HOW TO WIN SUCCESS. 27 

people neea more sleep than older ones, and you can- 
not safely disregard this hint. Late hours are 
always more or less injurious, especially when you are 
away from home or in the streets. Beware of the 
temptations of the streets and at the theatres. 

As to public entertainments or recreations in the 
evening, go to no place of seeing or hearing where 
you would not be willing to take your mother or 
sister. If you keep to this rule you are not likely 
to be hurt. If you play games, avoid billiard saloons, 
and gambling houses, or parties. You cannot be too 
careful about your recreations; let them be simple 
and healthful as to mind and body, and cheap. 

Have no personal habits, such as smoking, or chew- 
ing, or spitting, or swearing, or others that are in- 
jurious to yourselves or disagreeable to other people. 
All these are either injurious or disagreeable. Have 
clean hands and clean clothes, not while you are at 
work — this is not always possible — but when going 
and coming to and from work. 

Always give place to women in the streets, in 
street-cars, or in other places. Do not rush into 
street-cars first to get seats. A true gentleman will 
wait until women get in before he goes. Do not sit 
in street-cars, while women are standing, unless you 
are very, very tired. Here is a temptation before 
you every day almost in our city. Hardly anything 
is more trying than to see sturdy boys sitting in cars 
while women are standing and holding on to straps. 



2g GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

And yet I see this every day. What is a boy good 
for, that will not stand for a few minutes, if he can 
give a woman or an old man a seat ? 

If you are so favored as to have a few days or 
two weeks holiday in summer, go to the country or 
to the sea-shore, if your means will allow. The 
country air or sea air is better for you than almost 
any other change. 

Do not be extravagant in dress; but be well 
dressed — not, however, at your tailor's expense. It is 
the duty of all to be well dressed, but don't spend all 
your money on dress, and especially don't buy cloth- 
ing on credit. It is particularly trying to pay for 
clothing when it is nearly or quite worn out. By all 
means keep out of debt, for your personal or family 
expenses, unless you are sure beyond any doubt that 
you can very soon repay your dealer the money you 
owe. The difference between ease and comfort, and 
distress, in money* matters, is whether you spend a 
little more than you make, or a little less than you 
make. Don't forget the "rainy day" that is pretty 
sure to come, and you must lay up something for 
that day. 

Yery much of the crime that is committed every 
day (and you cannot open a paper without seeing an 
account of some one who has gone wrong) is because 
people will live beyond their means ; will spend more 
than they earn. They hope for an increase of pay, 
or that they will make money in some way or other, 



HOW TO WIN SUCCESS. 29 

and then when that good time does not come, and as 
they can't afford to wait for it, they take something, 
only borrowing it as they say, but they take it and 
spend it, or pay some pressing debt with it, and then, 
and then — they are caught, and sent to court, and 
tried and sent to — well, you know without my telling 
you. 

As to the mind. 

You have fine opportunities for education here, but 
they will soon be over, and if you leave this college 
without having a good knowledge of the practical 
branches of study pursued here, and which Mr. 
Girard especially enjoined should be taught, you will 
be at a great disadvantage with other boys who are 
well educated. I had a letter in my pocket a few days 
ago written by a Girard boy, and dated in the Moya- 
mensing Prison, full of bad spelling and bad gram- 
mar ; and next to the horror of knowing he was in 
prison, I felt ashamed, that a boy so ignorant of the 
very commonest branches of English education should 
have ever been within the walls of this college. 

I think I have told you before of a man who 
employs a large number of men, whose business 
amounts to perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars 
in a year, who is entirely ignorant of accounts, and 
who a few years ago was robbed and almost ruined 
by his book-keeper, and who would now give half of 
what he is worth, and that is a good deal, if he could 



30 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

understand book-keeping ; for he is entirely dependent 
upon other people to keep his accounts. 

As to books, be careful what you read. How it 
grieves me to see errand boys in street- cars, and some- 
times as they walk in the streets, reading such stuff 
as is found in the dime novels. Not merely a waste 
of time, though that is bad enough, but a positive 
injury to the mind, filling it with the most im- 
probable stories, and often, also, with that which is 
positively vicious. Read something better than this. 
Do not confine yourselves to newspapers, and do not 
read police reports. Attractive as this class of read- 
ing is, it is for the most part hurtful to the young 
mind. There is an abundance of cheap and good 
reading, magazines and periodicals ; and books and 
books, good, bad, indifferent; and you will hardly 
know which to choose unless you ask others who are 
older than you, and who know books. Most boys 
read little but novels ; and there are many thoroughly 
good novels, humorous, and pathetic, and historical. 
Don't buy books unless you have plenty of money ; 
for you can get everything you want out of the 
public libraries ; and this was not so, or at least to 
this extent, when I was a boy. 

As to work or business. 

Set out with the determination that you will be 
faithful in everything. Only last week a Girard boy 
called on me to help him get employment. I asked 
him some questions, and he told me that he had been 



HOW TO WIN SUCCESS. 3^ 

out of the college five or six years, and had five or 
six situations. Do you think he had been faithful in 
anything? If he had been, he would not have lost 
place after place. When you get a place, and I hope 
every one of you will have a place provided for you 
before you leave here, be among the first to arrive 
in the morning, and be among the last to leave at 
the end of the day's work. Do not let any fascina- 
tion of base ball or anything else lead you to forget 
that your first duty is to your employer. Be quick 
to answer every call. Don't say to yourself, " It is 
not my place to answer that call, it is the other boy's 
place," but go yourself, if the other fellow is slow, and 
let it be seen that you are ready for any work. And 
be very prompt to answer. Do whatever you are told. 
Say "yes, sir," "no, sir" with hearty good- will, and 
say " good-morning " as if you meant it. In short, 
do not be slovenly in anything you have to do ; be 
alive, and remember all the time that no labor is 
degrading. 

Be sure to treat your employers with unfailing re- 
spect, and your fellow-clerks or workers, whether 
superiors, inferiors or equals, with hearty good-will. 

Do not tell lies directly or indirectly, for even if 
jour employer do so, he will despise you for doing 
so. No matter if he is untruthful, he will respect 
you if you tell the truth always. Do not indulge 
in or listen to impure talk. No real gentleman does 
this, and you can be a real gentleman even if you 



32 GIEARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

are poor, for you will be educated. Make yourself 
indispensable to your employer; this, too, is quite 
possible, and it will almost certainly insure success. 
Be ambitious in the highest sense. Remember, that 
if not now, you will hereafter have others dependent 
upon you for support or help. It is a splendid thing 
for a boy to go out from this college with the determi- 
nation to support his mother ; and some that I know 
and you know are doing this, and many others will 
do it. 

I pause here to say that, so far, my words have 
been spoken as to your duties to the world, to your- 
selves. I have supposed that you boys would rather 
be bosses than journeymen, that you would rather 
own teams than drive them for other people, that 
you would rather be a contractor than carry the pick 
and shovel, that you would rather be a bricklayer 
than carry the hod, that you would rather be a 
house-builder than a shoveler of coal into the house- 
builder's cellar. Is it not so ? 

Now, 1 say that if you should do everything I tell 
you, and avoid everything I have warned you against, 
you cannot succeed in the best sense, you cannot be- 
come true men, such men as the city has a right to 
expect you to be, unless you seek the blessing of 
God ; for he holds all things in his hands. " The 
silver and the gold are mine, and the cattle upon a 
thousand hills." If God be for us, who can be 
against us? 



HOW TO WIN SUCCESS. 33 

In these closing words, then, I would speak to you 
as to your duty to God. 

What shall I say about this ? I can hardly tell 
you anything that you do not already know, so often 
have you been talked to about this subject But 
nothing is so important for you to be reminded of, 
though I fear that to some of you hardly anything is 
so uninteresting. Naturally the heart is disinclined 
to think of God and our duty to him. But Ave can- 
not do without him, though many people think they 
can, or they act as if they thought so. Such people 
are not wise ; they are very foolish. 

He made us, he preserves us, he cares for us with 
infinite love and care ? he has appointed the time for 
our departure from this life, and he has prepared a 
better life than this for those who love him here. We 
cannot afford to disregard such a being as this, for all 
things are in his hands. If you will think of it, some 
of the best men and women you know are believers 
in God, and are trying to serve him. Do you think 
you can do without him ? 

Cultivate, then, the companionship, the friendship 
of those who love and fear God, both men and wo- 
men. You are safe with such ; you are not quite so 
sure of safety in the society of those who openly say 
they can do without God. When I speak of those 
who fear God, I do not mean merely professors of re- 
ligion, not merely members of meeting or members 
of church, but I mean people who live such lives as 



34 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

people ought to live, who fear God and keep his com- 
mandments. You know there are such, you have 
met with them, you will meet many more of them, 
and you will meet also those who call themselves 
Christians, but whose lives show that they have no 
true knowledge of God, who are mere formalists, 
mere professors. 

Become acquainted with your Bible. I mean, 
read it, a little of it at least, every day. You need 
not read much, it is well sometimes that you read 
but a little ; but read it with a purpose — that is, to 
understand it. The literature of the Bible as you 
grow older will abundantly repay your careful and 
constant reading even before you reach its spir- 
itual treasuries. In reading a few days ago the argu- 
ment of Horace Binney, Esq., in the Girard will case, 
I was surprised to see how familiar Mr. Binney was 
with the Bible, and he was one of the ablest law- 
yers that has ever lived in our own or an} 7 other 
country. Yet Mr. Binney thought it quite worth his 
while to read and study the Bible. Don't you think 
it is worth your while also ? 

Be a regular attendant at some church. I do not 
say what church it shall be. That must be left to 
yourselves to determine, and many circumstances 
will arise to aid you in your choice. But let it be 
some church, and, when you become more interested 
in the subject than you are now, join that church, 
whatever it may be, and so connect yourselves with 



HOW TO WIN SUCCESS. 35 

people who believe in and love God. If there be a 
Bible class there, connect yourselves with it, and so 
learn to study the Scriptures systematically. 

Do not be ashamed to kneel at your bedside every 
night and every morning and pray to God. You are 
not so likely to be ashamed if you have a room to 
yourself; but you must not be ashamed to do this 
eyen if there are others in the room with you, as will 
be the case with many of you. This is a severe test, I 
know, but he who bears it faithfully will already 
have gained a victory. 

Commit to memory the fifteenth verse of the 
twelfth chapter of the Gospel according to St. Luke : 
" Take heed and beware of covetousness, for a man's 
life consisteth not in the abundance of the things he 
possesseth." 

On last Monday, Founder's Day, there were gath- 
ered here many men, a great company, who were 
trained in this college, and who, after graduation, went 
out into the world to seek their fortune. It is always 
•a most interesting time, not only for them but for 
the teachers and officers who have had charge of them. 

Some of them are successful men in the highest 
and best sense, and have made themselves a name 
and a place in the world. Bright young lawyers, 
clerks, mechanics, railroad men — men representing 
almost all kinds of business and occupations — came 
here in great numbers to celebrate the anniversary of 
the birth of the Founder of this great school. It was 



36 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

a grand sight. Hardly anything impresses me more. 
I do not know their names; for many of them had 
left before I began to come here ; but from certain 
expressions that fell from the lips of some of them 
I am persuaded that they, at least, are walking in 
the truth. 

It would be very interesting if we could know 
their thoughts, and see with what feelings they look 
back on their school-life. I wonder if any of them 
regret that they did not make a better use of their 
time while here. I wonder if any feel that they 
would like to become boys again and go to school 
over again, being sure that, with their present ex- 
perience of life, they would set a higher value on the 
education of the schools. I wonder if any feel that 
they would have reached higher positions and secured 
a larger influence if they had been more diligent at 
school. I wonder if there are any who can trace 
evil habits of thought to the companions they had 
here. I wonder if any are aware of evil impres- 
sions which they made on their classmates and so 
cast a stain and a dark shadow on other young lives, 
stains never obliterated, shadows never wholly lifted. 
I wonder if there are any among them who regret 
that the opportunity of seeking God and finding God 
in their school-days was neglected, and who have 
never had so favorable an opportunity since. " If 
some who come back here on these commemoration 
days were to tell you all their thoughts on such sub- 



HOW TO WIN SUCCESS. 37 

jects, they would be eloquent with a peculiar elo- 
quence." 

I wish I could persuade you, especially you larger 
boys, to give most earnest attention to the duties 
which lie before you every day. You will not mis- 
understand me, nor be so unjust to me as to suppose 
that I would interfere in the least degree with the 
pleasures which belong to your time of life. I 
would not lessen them in the least ; on the contrary, 
I would encourage you, and help you in all proper 
recreation, in all sports and plays. The boy who 
does not enjoy play is not a happy boy, and is not 
very likely to make a happy man, or a useful man. 
But it is quite possible, as some of you know, to 
enjoy in the highest degree all healthful sports, and 
at the same time to be industrious and conscientious 
in your studies. I am deeply concerned that the 
boys in this college shall be boys of the best, the 
highest type ; that they " shall walk in the truth." 
There are, alas, many boys who have gone through 
this college, and fully equipped (as well as their 
teachers could equip them), have been launched out 
into life and come to naught. I do not know their 
names nor do you, probably, though you do not doubt 
the fact. 

Whatever others say, who speak to you here, I 
want to discharge my duty to you as faithfully as I 
can. I know some of the difficulties of life, for they 
have been in my path. I know some of the fierce 



38 



GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 



temptations to which boys and young men are ex- 
posed, for I have felt these assaults in my own 
person. I know what it is to sin against God, for I 
am a sinner ; so, with my sympathies quick towards 
you, I come with these plain, earnest words, and I 
urge you to look up to God, and ask him to help 
you. He can help you, and he will, if you ask hinu 



LIFE— ITS OPPORTUNITIES AND TEMPTA- 
TIONS. 

March 12, 1885. 

I pkopose to speak to you now of some plain and 
practical duties which await you in life ; and, as 
there are many boys here who are anxiously looking 
for the time when they will leave the college to 
make their way in the world, some of whom will 
probably have left the eollege before I come again, I 
speak more especially to them. And my first words 
are words of congratulation, and for these reasons : 

1. Because you are young. And this means very 
much. You have an enormous advantage over peo- 
ple that are your seniors. Other things being equal, 
you will live longer, and I assume that " life is worth 
living." Then you have the advantage of profiting 
by the mistakes committed by those who precede 
you, and if you are not blind, you can avail your- 
selves of the successes they have achieved. 

You have the freshness, the zest of youth. You 
are full of courage and endurance. You can grapple 
with difficult subjects and with a strong hand. And 
if you blunder, you have time to recover yourselves 

(39) 



40 GIRAED COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

and start anew. In short, life is before you, and you 
look forward with the inspiration of hope, and it may 
be, also, of determination. 

2. I congratulate you also because you are poor. 
You have your own way to make in the world. You 
know already that if you achieve success, it must be 
because you exert yourselves to the very utmost. 
Indeed, you must depend upon yourselves, and this 
means that you must do everything in your power 
that is right to do, to help yourselves. 

You must understand that there is no royal road 
to success, any more than there is to learning, and that 
there is no time to trifle. If you were rich men's 
sons, these remarks would have no special pertinence, 
or importance. 

My congratulations are quite in order also because 
very many, if not most of the high places in our 
country, are held by those who once were poor lads. 

Should you turn upon me and say, " Why, then, if 
one is to be congratulated on his poverty, do fathers 
toil early and late, denying themselves needed recre- 
ation, not ceasing when they have accumulated a 
good estate, almost selling their souls to become mil- 
lionaires — why do they so much dread to leave their 
sons to stru^rde for a living?" More than one an- 
swer might be given to these questions. Some 
fathers have so little faith in God's providence that 
they forget his goodness, which now takes care of 
their families through the instrumentality of parents; 



LIFE— ITS OPPORTUNITIES AND TEMPTATIONS. ^.\ 

and who can continue that care through other means, 
just as well, when the parents are gone ; but high au- 
thority says that " they who will be rich, fall into 
temptations and snares," one of which is that the 
race for riches unfits the racer for all other pursuits 
and amusements, and he can't stop his course, he 
can't change his habits, he has no other mental 
resources — he must work or perish. 

Do not, then, let the fact that you are poor dis- 
courage you in the least — it is rather an advantage. 

3. But again I congratulate you, because your lot- 
is cast in America. Do not smile at this. I am not 
on the point of flying the American eagle, nor of 
raising the stars and stripes. It is, however, a good 
thing to have been born in this country. For in all 
important respects it is the most favored of all lands. 
It is the fashion with certain people to disparage our 
government and its institutions ; and one must admit 
that in some particulars there might be improvement, 
and will be some day; but, notwithstanding these 
defects, it is unquestionably true that it is the best 
government on earth. Is there any country where a 
poor young man has opportunities as good as he has 
here, to get on in life? Is there any obstacle or 
hindrance whatever, outside of himself, in the way 
of his success ? If a young man has good health of 
mind and body, and a fair English education and 
good manners, and will be honest and industrious, is 
he not much more certain to attain success, in one 



42 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

way or another, in this country than anywhere else ? 
You know he is. Why ? Because of our equal rights 
under the law. There is no caste here, that curse of 
monarchies. There is no aristocracy in sentiment or 
in power, no House of Lords, no established church, 
no law of primogeniture. One man is as good as 
another under the law as long as he behaves himself. 

If you want further evidence, only look for a mo- 
ment at the condition of the seething, surging masses 
of Europe, and the continual apprehensions of a gen- 
eral war. Before this year 1885 has run its course 
the United States may be almost the only country 
among the great powers that is not involved in war. 

And if still further illustration were needed, let me 
point to that most extraordinary scene enacted in 
Washington some weeks ago. 

A great political party, which has held control of 
this government nearly a quarter of a century, and 
which has exercised almost unlimited power, yields 
most quietly and gracefully all high places, all dig- 
nity, all honor and patronage, to the will of the peo- 
ple who have chosen a new administration. And 
everybody regards it as a matter of course. 

Was such a thing ever known before ? And could 
such a thing occur anywhere else among the nations ? 

Once more, I congratulate you because you live in 
Philadelphia. Ah, now we come to a most inter- 
esting point. Most of you were born here, and you 
come to this by inheritance. This is the best of all 



LIFE— ITS OPPORTUNITIES AND TEMPTATIONS. 4$ 

large cities. More to be desired as a place to live in 
than Washington, the seat of government, the most 
beautiful of all American cities, or New York, with 
its vast commerce and enormous wealth, or Boston, 
with its boasted intellectual society. 

They may call us the "Quaker City" or the "worst 
paved city" or the " slow city" or the " city of rows 
of houses exactly alike ; " but these houses are the 
homes of separate families, and in a very large 
degree are occupied by their owners, and you cannot 
say as much of any other city in the world. Al- 
though there are doubtless many instances in the 
oldest part of the city, and among the improvident 
poor, where more than one family will be found in 
the same house, yet these are the exceptions and not 
the rule ; and so far as I know there is not one " tene- 
ment house " in this great city that was built for the 
purpose of accommodating several families at the 
same time. I need not point you to New York and 
Boston, where the great apartment houses, with their 
twelve and fourteen stories of flats for rich and well- 
to-do people prevail, utterly destroying that most 
cherished domestic life of which we have been so 
proud, and introducing the life of European cities, 
with its demoralizing associations and results; nor 
shall I describe the awful tenement houses in those 
two cities, where the poor are crowded like animals 
in a cattle-train, suffering as the poor dumb creatures 



44 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

do, for want of air, and water, and space, and every- 
thing else that makes life desirable. 

Of all cities on the face of the earth, Philadelphia 
is the most desirable for the young man who must 
make his own way in the world. 

And having shown you how favorable are the con- 
ditions which are about you, the next point is, What 
will you do when you set out for yourselves ? 

All of you are expecting when you leave school to 
be employed by somebody, or engaged in some busi- 
ness. And I suppose you may be looking to me to 
give you some hints how to take care of yourselves, 
or how to behave in such relations. 

I will try to do so plainly and faithfully. 

I cannot absolutely promise you success. Indeed, 
it would be necessary first to define the word. And 
there are several definitions that might be given. 
One of the shortest and best would be in these words, 
"A life well spent." That's success. And this defini- 
tion shall be my model. 

Work hard, then, at your lessons. Let your am- 
bition be, not to get through quickly, not to go over 
much ground in text-books, but to master thoroughly 
everything before you. If you knew how little 
thorough instruction there is, you would thank me 
for this. There are so many half-educated people 
from schools and colleges that one cannot help be- 
lieving that the terms of graduation are very easy. 
There have been, and are now, graduates of colleges 



LIFE— ITS OPPORTUNITIES AND TEMPTATIONS. 45 

who cannot add up a long column of figures correctly, 
nor do an example in simple proportion, nor write a 
letter of four pages of note paper without mistakes 
of grammar and spelling and punctuation, to say 
nothing of perspicuity and unity and general good 
taste. 

It is quite surprising to find how helpless some 
young men are in the simple matter of writing let- 
ters ; an art with which, in these days of cheap post- 
age and cheap stationery, almost everybody has some- 
thing to do. If you doubt this let me ask you to try 
to-morrow to w T rite a note of twenty lines on any 
subject whatever, off-hand, and submit it for criticism 
to your teacher. Do you wonder, then, that an em- 
ployer calling one of his young men, and directing 
him to write a letter to one of his correspondents, 
saying such and such things, and bring it to him for 
his signature, is surprised and grieved to see that the 
letter is in such shape that he cannot sign it and let 
it go out of his office ? 

It is very true that letter-writing is not the chief 
business of life, not the only thing of importance in 
a counting-house, but it is an elegant accomplish- 
ment, and most desirable of attainment. 

Let me say some words about shorthand writing. 
In this day of push and drive and hurry, when so 
many things must be done at once, there is an in- 
creasing demand for shorthand writers. In fact, 
business as now conducted cannot afford to do with- 



46 GIRARP COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

out this help. It often occurs that a principal in a 
business house cannot take the time to write long let- 
ters. Why should he ? It does not pay to have one 
that is occupied in governing and controlling great in- 
terests, or in the receipt of a large salary, tied to a desk 
writing letters, or reports, or statements of any kind. 
He must talk off these things ; and he must be an ed- 
ucated man, whose mind is so disciplined to terse and 
accurate expression that his dictation may almost be 
taken to be final. He wants a clerk who can take down 
his words with literal accuracy, and who will be able 
to correct any errors that may have been spoken, and 
submit the complete paper to his chief for his signa- 
ture. The demand for this kind of service is increas- 
ing every day, and some of you now listening to me 
will be so employed. See that you are ready for it 
when your opportunity comes. 

If you get to be a clerk in a railroad office, or in 
an insurance company, or in a store, or in a bank, de- 
vote yourself to your particular duties, whatever they 
may be. And don't be too particular as to what 
kind of work it is that falls to your lot. It may be 
work that you think belongs to the porter; no mat- 
ter if it is, do it, and do it as well as the porter can, 
or even better. 

Let none of you, therefore, think that anything 
you are likely to be called upon to do is beneath you. 
Do it, and do it in the best manner, and you may not 
have to do it for a long time. 



LIFE— ITS OPPORTUNITIES AND TEMPTATIONS. 47 

Make yourself indispensable to your employer. 
You can do that ; it is quite within your power, and 
it may be that you may get to be an employer your- 
self; indeed it is more than probable ; but you must 
work for it. 

If you get to be a bookkeeper in any counting- 
house or public institution, remember that you are in 
a position of trust and responsibility. When you 
make errors do not erase the error; draw faint red or 
black lines through it and write correct characters 
over the error. Do not hide your errors of any kind. 
Do not misstate anything in language or figures. 
Everybody makes errors at some time or other, but 
everybody does not admit and apologize for them. 
The honest man is he who does admit and apologize, 
and does so without waiting to be detected. 

There have been of late some deplorable instances 
of betrayal of trust in our city. I may as well call 
it by its right name, stealing. The culprits are now 
suffering in prison the penalty for their crimes. 
While I am speaking to you there are men, young 
and not young, in our city who are now stealing, and 
who are falsifying their books in the vain hope that 
it may be kept secret; who are dreading the day 
when they will be caught ; who cannot afford to take a 
holiday ; who cannot afford to be sick, lest absence 
for a single day may disclose their guilt. What a 
horrible state of mind ! They will go to their desks 



48 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

or their offices to-morrow morning, not knowing but 
it may be their last day in that place. 

And the day will come, most surely, when you 
will be tempted as these wretched ones have been 
tempted. In what shape the temptation may come, 
or when, no human being knows. The suggestion 
will be made, that by the use of a little money you 
may make a good deal ; that the venture is perfectly 
safe ; some one tells you so, and points to this one or 
that one who has tried it and made money. It is 
only a little thing; you can't lose much; you may 
make enough to pay for the cost of your summer 
holiday, or for your cigar bill, or your beer bill ; or 
you will be able to smoke better cigars or drink better 
beer, or buy a gold watch, or a diamond ring, or any- 
thing else ; you cant lose much. You have no money 
of your own, it is true, but what is needed will not 
be missed if you take it out of the drawer. Shall you 
do it ? No ! Let nothing induce you to take the first 
dollar not your own. It is the first step that counts. 

But suppose you don't care for this warning, or for- 
get it. Suppose the time comes when you find that 
you have taken something that was not yours, and 
that it is lost, and that you cannot repay it, what 
then? Why, go at once to your employer; tell him 
the whole story; keep back nothing; throw yourself 
upon his mercy, and ask forgiveness. Better now 
than later. You will assuredly be caught. There is 
no possibility of continuous concealment. Tell it 



LIFE— ITS OPPORTUNITIES AND TEMPTATIONS. 49 

now before you are detected, and, if you must be dis- 
graced, the sooner the better. 

Am I too earnest about this ? Am I saying too 
much ? Oh, boys, young men, if you knew the fright- 
ful danger that you may be in some day, the subtle 
temptations that will beset you, the many instances 
of weakness about you, the shipwrecks of character, 
the utter ruin that comes to sisters and to innocent 
wives and children by the crimes of brothers, hus- 
bands and fathers, as we who are older know, you 
would not wonder that I speak as I do. 

Every case of breach of trust, every defalcation, 
weakens confidence in human character. For every 
such instance of wrong-doing is a stab at your integ- 
rity if you are in a position of trust. Men of the 
fairest reputation, men who are trusted implicitly by 
their employers, men who are hedged about by the 
sacredness of domestic ties, on whom the happiness 
of helpless wives and innocent children depend, men 
who claim to be religious, go astray, step by step, little 
by little ; they defraud, steal, lie, try to cover up 
their tracks, cannot do it long, are caught, tried, con- 
victed, sentenced and imprisoned. Then the ques- 
tion may be asked about you or me : " How do 
we know that Mr. So-and-So is any better than those 
who have fallen?" Don't you see that these culprits 
are enemies of the public confidence, enemies of 
society, your enemies and mine ? 

If the names of those who are now serving out 



50 G1RARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

their sentences in the public prisons for stealing, not 
petty theft, but stealing and defrauding in larger 
sums, could be published in to-morrow morning's 
papers, what a sad record it would be of dishonored 
names and blighted lives and ruined homes, and how 
the memory would recall some whom we knew in 
early youth, the pride of their parents, or the idol 
of fond wives and lovely children ; and we should 
turn away with sickening horror from the record ! 
But, if there should appear in the same papers the 
names of those who are now engaged in stealing and 
defrauding and falsifying entries, who are not yet 
caught, but who may, before this year is out, be 
caught and convicted and punished, what a horrible 
revelation that would be ! 

I close abruptly, for I cannot keep you longer. 

But do not think that it is for your future in this 
life only that I am concerned. Life does not end 
here, though it may seem to do so. Our life in this 
world is a mere beginning of existence. It is the 
future, the endless life before us, that we should 
prepare for ; and no preparation is worth the name 
except that of a pure, an upright and honorable life, 
that depends for its support on the love and the fear of 
God. You must accept him as your Father, you 
must honor him and obey him, and so consecrating 
your young lives to his service, trust him to care for 
you with his infinite love and care. 




^ 



d 



<C42^9z/ //yetd/is 



ON THE DEATH OF WILLIAM WELSH, 
First President of the Board of City Trusts. 

February 22, 1878. 

When I spoke to you last from this desk I tried to 
persuade you to adopt the thought so aptly set forth 
by one of the old Hebrew kings. Whatsoever thy 
hand findeth to do, do it with thy might. I little 
thought then that Mr. Welsh, who was one of the 
most conspicuous examples of working with all his 
might, and so much of whose work was done for you, 
whom you so often saw standing where I now stand, 
I little thought that his work on earth was so nearly 
done. Last Sunday he addressed you here. One, 
two, three services he conducted for the boys of this 
college, one in the infirmary, one in the refectory for 
the new boys, and one in this chapel. I venture to 
say from my knowledge of his method of doing 
things that these services were all conducted in the 
best manner possible to him ; that he did not spare 
his strength ; that there was nothing weak or un- 
decided in his acts or speech, but that he took hold 
of his subject with a firm grasp, and did not let go 
until the service was finished. It is very natural 

(51) 



52 



GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 



that we should desire to know as much as we can 
about a life that has come so close to us as the life 
of Mr. Welsh, and to learn, if we may, what it was 
that made him the man that he was. The thou- 
sands of people that gathered in and about St. Luke's 
Church on the day of the funeral, as many of you 
saw ; the very large number of citizens of the highest 
distinction who united in the solemn services; the 
profound interest manifested everywhere among all 
classes of society ; the closing of places of business 
at the hour of these services ; the flags at half-mast, 
all these circumstances, so unusual, so impressive, 
assured us that no common man had gone from 
among us. What was it that made him no common 
man ? What was there in his life and character 
that lifted him above the ordinarily successful mer- 
chant? In other places, and by those most com- 
petent to speak, will the complete picture of his 
life be drawn, but what was there in his life which 
particularly interests you college boys ? It will 
surprise you probably when I tell you that his 
early education — the education of the schools — was 
very limited. He was not a college-bred man. At 
a very early age (as early as fourteen, I believe) he 
left school and went into his father's store. You 
know that he could not have had much education at 
that age. And he went into the store, not to be a 
gentleman clerk to sit in the counting-house and copy 
letters and invoices, and do the bank business and 



WILLIAM WELSH. 53 

lounge about in fine clothing, but he went to do any- 
thing that came to hand, rough and smooth, hard 
and easy, dirty and clean, for in those days the 
duties of a junior clerk differed from those of a 
porter only in this, that the young clerk's work was 
not so heavy as the robust porter's. And even when 
he grew older and stronger he would go down into 
ihe hold of a vessel and vie with the strong steve- 
dore in the shifting and placing of cargoes. And the 
days were long then : there were no office hours from 
nine to three o'clock, but merchants and their clerks 
dined near the middle of the day, and were back at 
their stores, their warehouses, in the afternoon and 
stayed and worked until the day was done. So this 
young clerk worked all day, and went home at night 
tired and hungry, to rest, to sleep and to go through 
the next day and the next in the same manner. But 
not only to rest and sleep. The body was tired 
enough with the long day's work, but the mind was 
not tired. He early knew the importance of mental 
discipline, of mental cultivation. He knew that a 
half-educated man is no match for one thoroughly 
equipped, and so he set himself to the task of 
making up, as far as he could, for that deficiency of 
systematic education which his early withdrawal 
from school made him regret so much. What 
definite means or methods he resorted to to accom- 
plish this I cannot tell you, for I have not learned ; 
but the fact that he did very largely overcome this 



54 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

most serious disadvantage is apparent to all who have 
ever met him. He was a cultivated gentleman, thor- 
oughly at ease in circles where men must be well in- 
formed or be very uncomfortable. As the President of 
this Board of Trustees, having for his associates gen- 
tlemen of the highest professional and general culture, 
he was quite equal to any exigency which ever arose. 
All this you must know was the result of education, 
not that which was imparted to him in the schools, but 
that which he acquired himself after his school life. 
He was careful about his associates. Then, as now, 
the streets were alive with boys and young men of 
more than questionable character. And the thought 
which has come up in many a boy's mind after his 
day's work was done, must have come up in his 
mind : " Why should I not stroll about the streets 
with companions of my own age and have a good 
time ? Why should I be so strict while others have 
more freedom and enjoy themselves so much more?" 
I have no doubt that he had his enjoyments, and 
that he was a free, hearty boy in them all, but I 
cannot suppose, for his after life gave no evidence of 
it, his general good health, his muscular wiry frame 
forbade the thought, I cannot suppose his youthful 
pleasures passed beyond that line which separates 
the good from the bad, the pure from the impure. 
Few evils are so great as that of evil companions. 

William Welsh was not afraid of work. I mean 
by that he was not lazy. A large part of the failures 



WILLIAM WELSH. 55 

in life are attributable to the love of ease. We 
choose the soft things ; we turn away from those 
which are hard. We are deterred by the abstruse, 
the obscure ; we are attracted by the simple, the 
plain. A really strong character will grapple with 
any subject ; a weak one shrinks from a struggle. A 
character naturally weak may be developed by cul- 
ture and discipline into one of real strength, but the 
process is very slow and very discouraging. A life 
that is worth anything at all, that impresses itself on 
other lives, on society, must have these struggles, 
this training. I do not know minutely the charac- 
teristics of Mr. Welsh's early life in this particular, 
but I infer most emphatically that his strong char- 
acter was formed by continuous, laborious, exacting 
self- application. 

I would now speak of that quality which is so 
valuable (I will not say so rare), so conspicu- 
ously and so immeasurably important, personal in- 
tegrity. Mr. Welsh possessed this in the highest 
degree. He was most emphatically an honest man. 
No thought of anything other than this could ever 
have entered into the mind of any one who knew 
him. All men knew that public or private trusts 
committed to him were safe. Mistakes in judgment 
all are liable to, but of conscious deflection from the 
right path in this respect he was incapable. His 
high position as President of the Board of City Trusts, 
which includes, among other large properties, the 



56 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

great estate left by Mr. Girard to the city of Phila- 
delphia, proves the confidence this community had in 
his personal character. His private fortune was used 
as if he were a trustee. He recognized the hand of 
God in his grand success as a merchant, and he felt 
himself accountable to God for a proper expenditure. 
If he enjoyed a generous mode of living for himself 
and his family- — a manner of life required by his 
position in the community — he more than equalized 
it by his gifts to objects of benevolence. He was 
conscientious and liberal (rare combination) in his 
benefactions, for he felt that he held his personal 
property in trust. 

Such are a few of the traits in the character of 
the man whose life on earth was so suddenly closed 
on Monday last. Under Providence, by which I 
mean the blessing of God, that blessing which 
is just as much within your reach as his, these are 
some of the conditions of his extraordinary suc- 
cess. His self-culture, the choice of his companions 
his persistent industry, his integrity, his religion, 
made the man what he was. I cannot here speak of 
his work in that church which he loved so much. I 
do not speak with absolute certainty, but I have 
reason to believe that, next to his own family, his 
affections were placed on you. He could never look 
into your faces without having his feelings stirred to 
their profoundest depths. He loved you — in the 
best, the truest sense, he loved you. He was willing 



WILLIAM WELSH. 57 

to give any amount of his time, his thought, his care, 
to you. The time he spent in the chapel was a very 
small part of the time he gave to his work for you. 
You were upon his heart constantly. I do not know 
— no one can know — but if it be possible for the spirits 
of just men made perfect to revisit the scenes of earth 
— to come back and look upon those they loved so 
much when in the flesh — I am sure his spirit is here 
to-day — this, his first Sabbath in Heaven — looking 
into your faces, as he often did when he went in and 
out among you, and wishing that all of you may 
make such use of your grand opportunity here as will 
insure your success in the life which is before you 
when you leave these college walls, and especially as 
will insure your entering into the everlasting life. 
Such was his life, full of activity, generosity, self- 
denial, eminently religious, in the best sense success- 
ful. He was never at rest ; his heart was alw T ays 
open to human sympathy ; he denied nothing except 
to himself. He wanted everybody to be religious. 
He died in the harness ; no time to take it off; no 
wish to take it off. But in the front, on the advance, 
not in retreat. He never turned his back on any- 
thing that was right. His eye was not dim ; his 
natural force was not abated. Death came so swiftly 
that it seemed only stepping from one room in his 
Fathers house to another. We are reminded of the 
beautiful words in which Mr. Thackeray describes 
the death of Colonel Newcome in the hospital of 



58 



GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 



the Charter House School, after a life spent in fight- 
ing the enemies of his country abroad, and the ene- 
mies of the good in society at home. '"At the usual 
evening hour the chapel bell began to toll and 
Thomas Newcome's hands outside the bed feebly beat 
time. And just as the last bell struck, a peculiar 
sweet smile shone over his face. He lifted up his 
head a little and quickly said Adsum, and fell back. 
It was the word they used at school when names 
were called, and lo, he, whose heart was as that of a 
little child, had answered to his name and stood in 
the presence of ' The Master.' " 



BAD ASSOCIATES. 

November 11, 1888. 

I wish to speak to you to-day about the danger of 
evil company, a danger to which you will necessarily 
be exposed when you go out from this college to make 
your way in life. 

The desire for companionship sometimes leads 
people, and especially young people, into bad com- 
pany. A boy finds himself associated with a school- 
mate, a fellow-apprentice or fellow-clerk, who is at- 
tractive in manners, full of fun, but who is not what 
he ought to be in character. 

No one is entirely bad; almost all persons old or 
young have some points that are not repulsive, and 
sometimes the very bad are attractive in some re- 
spects. A comparatively innocent boy is thrown 
into such company, and, at first, he sees nothing in 
the conduct of his new friends which is particularly 
out of the way. The conversation is somewhat 
guarded, the jokes and stories are not specially bad, 
and, for a time, nothing occurs to shock his feelings j 
but, after a while, the mask is thrown off and the 
true character is revealed. Then very soon the mind 

(59) 



60 



GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 



of the pure, innocent boy receives impressions that 
corrupt and defile it. All that is polluting in talk 
and story and song is poured out. Books and papers, 
so vile that it is a breach of law to sell them, are read 
and quoted without bringing a blush to the cheek, 
and, before his parents are aware of the danger, the 
mind and heart of their son are so polluted and de- 
praved that no human power can save him. 

I very well remember a boy older than myself who, 
early in life, gave himself up to vile company and 
vile books and vile habits, and who, long ago — almost 
as soon as he reached an early manhood — sunk, un- 
der the weight of his sinful habits, into a dishonored 
grave, but not until he had defiled and depraved 
many a boy who came under his influence. Better 
would it have been for his companions if their daily 
walks and playgrounds had been infested with ven- 
omous serpents, to bite and sting their bare feet, 
than to associate with a boy whose heart was full of 
all uncleanness. 

It is dangerous to make such friendships. Circum- 
stances may throw us among them ; the providence 
of God may send us there, but we ought never to seek 
such company, except for good purposes. What I 
mean is that we ought not to seek such associates, 
however agreeable they may be in other respects, 
and not to remain among them except for their 
good. 

There are wicked people in every community, of 



BAD ASSOCIATES. Ql 

ah ages. We cannot altogether avoid contact with 
them. We find them among our schoolmates and in 
the walks of business. 

Many a young man, many a boy. has been forever 
ruined by evil companions. A corrupt literature is 
bad enough, but evil companions are more numerous 
and, if possible, more fatal. Bad books and papers 
have slain their thousands ; bad companions have 
slain their ten thousands. I can recall the names of 
many who were led away, step by step, down the 
broad road that leads to destruction, by companions 
genial, attractive, but corrupt. 

There are some companions from whom you can 
not separate yourselves. They are with you con- 
tinually; at home and abroad, in school or at play, 
by day and by night, asleep and awake, they are al- 
ways with you. There is no solitude so deep that 
they cannot find you, no crowd so great that they 
will ever lose you. No matter who else is with you, 
they will not — cannot — be kept away. I mean your 
own thoughts, your bosom companions. Shall they be 
evil companions or good ? Ah ! you know who, and 
who only, can answer this question. 

I once went through a monastery in the old city 
of Florence, in Italy. It was a retreat for men who 
were tired of the world, or who felt so unequal to 
the strife and conflict of life in the world that they 
believed peace could be found only in retirement. 
The house was of the order of St. Francis. One of 



■62 



GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 



the monks took me into his cell, and I sat down and 
talked with him. It was a very small room — one 
door, one window, bare walls, a small table, two 
wooden chairs, a few books, a crucifix, a washstand, 
and some pieces of crockery ; and that was all. In 
this room he lived, never to leave it except to go to 
the chapel, just across the corridor, and to walk in 
the cloisters for exercise ; here he expected to die. 
It seemed very dreary and lonely to me. But I 
thought, if this were a certain and sure way of escap- 
ing from evil thoughts, and the only way, men may 
well submit to the confinement, the solitude, the 
monotony, the dreariness of this way of life. But, 
^ilas ! it is not so. No close and narrow cell, no iron 
doors, no bolts and bars, can shut out our thoughts, 
for they are a part of ourselves : they are ourselves ; 
for, " as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." 

Some years ago a country lad left his home to seek 
his fortune in the city. His mother was dead and 
his father broken in health and in fortune. The boy 
reached the city full of high hopes, promising his 
father that he would do bis best to succeed in what- 
ever fell to his lot to do. He was tall, strong and 
good-looking. A place was soon found for him, and 
until he was better able to support himself he found 
a home with some friends. He was a boy of good 
mind but with a very imperfect education, and he 
seemed inclined to make up for this in part by read- 
ing during his leisure hours. The situation found 



BAD ASSOCIATES. g3 

for him was in a large commercial house, where 
everything was conducted in the best manner and on 
the highest principles. Here he made rapid progress 
and was soon able to contribute to the support of 
those he had left at home in the country. He be- 
came interested in serious things, united with the 
Sunday-school, and after a while made a profession 
of religion. Everything went well with him for 
several years, until he fell in with some boys near 
his own age, who had been brought up under very 
different circumstances. Two or three of these were 
inclined towards skepticism in religious things, and 
their reading was quite unlike that to which this 
boy had been accustomed. Some fascination of man- 
ner about them attracted the lad to their society, 
and he grew less and less fond of his truest and best 
friends. He became irregular in his attendance at 
the Sunday-school, and when remonstrated with by 
his teacher and friends had no candid and manly 
answer for them. After a while he ceased going to 
church entirely, spending his time at his lodgings 
reading profane and immoral books or in the society 
of his new companions. Then he found his way 
with these friends (so he called them, but they were 
really his greatest enemies) to taverns and even to 
worse places, reading a corrupt literature and think- 
ing he was strengthening his mind and broadening 
his views. A little further on and his habits grew 
worse, and became the subject of observation and 



54 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

remark. His early friends interposed, talked kindly 
with him and received his promise to turn away from 
his evil associates (who had well-nigh ruined him) 
and to lead a better life. He promised well, and for 
a time things with him were better. But after 
a while he fell away again into his old ways and with 
his old tempters, and before his friends were aware 
of it he disappeared and went abroad. Then letters 
were received from him. He was without means ; 
he found it hard to get employment ; he had no refer- 
ences, and the people among whom he found himself 
were distrustful of strangers. 

One of his friends to whom he wrote for a letter 
of recommendation replied something like this : 

" It is impossible for me to give you a letter of 
recommendation except with qualification. If you 
are seeking employment it is your duty to make a 
candid statement of your condition. Make a clean 
breast of it. Keep nothing back. Say that you had 
a good situation ; that you were growing with the 
growth of your employers ; that your salary had been 
advanced twice within the year; that one of the 
partners was your friend ; that he had stood by you 
in your earlier youth ; that he had extricated you 
from embarrassment and would have helped you 
again when needed, and that in an evil hour you 
forgot this, and your duty to him and to the house 
which sustained you ; that you left your place 
without your father's knowledge and well-nigh or 



BAD ASSOCIATES. 55 

quite broke his heart, and that all this grew out of 
your love of bad associates and your love of drink, 
and that while under this infatuation you went 
astray with bad women ; and that in very despair 
of your ability to save yourself, and ashamed to 
meet your employers, you sought other scenes in the 
hope that in a new field and with new associates you 
could reform. 

" If you say this or something like this to a Chris- 
tian man, little as you affect to think of Christian- 
ity, his heart will open to you and you can then look 
him frankly in the face, and have no concealments 
from him. Any other course than this will only 
prolong your agony, and in the end plunge you in 
deeper shame and disgrace. If you will take this 
advice, you may yet make a man of yourself, and no 
one will be more rejoiced than myself or more ready 
to help you. Read the parable of the prodigal son 
every day ; don't think so much of your fancied men- 
tal ability ; get down off your stilts and be a man, a 
humble, penitent man, and make your father's last 
days cheerful, instead of blasting his life. 

" You see that I am in earnest and that I feel a 
deep interest in you, else I would have thrown your 
letter to me into the fire." 

I believe that this young man's fall was due en- 
tirely to the influence of his foolish, bad companions. 
And I know that this sad history is the record of 
many others; in fact, that the same experience 



g5 GIRAKD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

awaits all who think it a light matter what company 
they keep, and who drift on the current with no pur- 
pose except to find pleasure, without regard to their 
duty to God. When I see, as I so often do, young 
men standing at the corners of the streets, or lounging 
against lamp-posts, and catch a word as I pass, very 
often profane or indecent, I know very w r ell that a 
work of ruin is going on there, which, if unchecked, 
will certainly lead to destruction. And I wonder 
whether these boys and young men have parents or 
sisters, who love them and who yet allow them to 
pass unwarned down the road that leads to death. 

But there are other companions, foolish, bad com- 
panions, besides those that appear to us in bodily 
form. They confront us in the printed page. You 
read a book or a pamphlet or paper which is full of 
dialogue. Such books are often more attractive than 
a plain narrative with little conversation. You enter 
fully, even if unconsciously, into + he spirit of the 
story. The characters are real to you. You seem 
to see the forms before you ; you make a picture of 
each in your mind, so that if you were an artist you 
could paint the portrait of each one. Sometimes the 
dialogue is full of profanity, and though you make no 
sound as you read, you are really pronouncing each 
word in your mind. And every time you say a bad 
word, in your mind, you defile your heart. You are 
in effect listening to bad words not spoken by other 
people merely, but spoken by yourself, and before 



BAD ASSOCIATES. Q'J 

you are aware of it you will be in the habit of think- 
ing oaths when you are afraid to speak them out. It 
is even worse, if possible, when the language is ob- 
scene. Now do you ever think that when you are 
reading such wretched stuff you are in effect associat- 
ing with the characters whose talk you are listening 
to, and without rebuke ? They are thieves, pirates, 
burglars, dissolute, the very worst of society, even 
murderers. You may not have the courage to re- 
buke those who are defiling the very air with their 
foul talk; you may be too cowardly even to turn 
away from such company lest they sneer at you ; but 
what do you say of a boy who deliberately, and after 
being warned, reads by stealth such stuff as I have 
described ? Is there any one here who would be 
guilty of such conduct? 

These evils of which I am speaking, and I do so 
most reluctantly, for these are not pleasant subjects — 
are not mere theories. They are sad realities. It 
was my ill fortune in my boyhood to know some boys 
who were essentially corrupt. Their minds were 
cages of unclean birds. They were inexpressibly 
vile. And it is this fear of the evil that one sinner 
may do among young boys that leads me to say what 
I do on this most painful subject. Oh, boys, if I can 
persuade you to turn away from foolish company, 
from bad associates, I shall feel that I am doing in- 
deed a blessed work. For what is the object, the 
purpose of all this that is said to you ? It is to make 



gg GIRARD COLLEGE ADDBESSES. 

men of you and to give you grace and strength to 
assert your manhood. It is to build you up on the 
foundation of a substantial education, and so prepare 
you for the life that is before you here and for that 
life which is beyond. But the education of text- 
books illustrated by the best instructors is not 
enough; it is not all you need for the great work of 
your lives. You must be ready when you are 
equipped not only to take care of yourselves, but to 
help those who may be dependent upon you, for you 
are not to live for yourselves. And you cannot be 
fully equipped unless you have the blessing of Al- 
mighty God on your work and on your life. 

I want you to be successful men, and no man can 
be a successful man, in the highest and best sense, 
unless he is a religious man. How can one expect 
to make his way in life as he ought, without the bless- 
ing of God ? And how can one expect the blessing 
of God who does not ask God for his blessing? 
Prayers in the church are not enough ; the reading 
of the Scriptures in the church is not enough ; you 
must read the Scriptures for yourselves; you must 
pray for yourselves and each one for himself, as well 
as for others. 




7/7^ro€J 






ON THE DEATH OF PRESIDENT GARFIELD. 

September 25, 1881. 

I wish to lead your thoughts to one of the strangest 
things — one of the most difficult things to understand, 
which has ever occurred. On the second day of July 
last the President of the United States, when about 
to step into a railway train which was to carry him 
North, where he was to attend a college commence- 
ment, at the college where he was graduated, was 
shot down by an assassin. 

I say it is one of the strangest things, because the 
President did not know the assassin, and had never 
injured him nor any of his friends. There was ab- 
solutely no motive for the hideous deed. 

I say it is most difficult to understand, because we 
believe that Divine Providence overrules all events, 
holds all power, and we wonder why He permitted 
the wretch to do so deplorable a deed. 

President Garfield was no ordinary man. He was 
emphatically a man of the people. He was born in 
a log-cabin which his father had built with his own 
hands. It was a very small house, twenty feet by 
thirty. When James was two years old, his father 

(69) 




70 



GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 



died, late in the autumn, and this boy with three 
other children were all dependent upon their mother 
for a support. How the lone widow passed that 
winter we do not know ; but when the spring came 
there was a debt to be paid, and part of the farm had 
to go to pay it. About thirty acres of the clearing 
were left, and this little farm was worked by the 
mother and her oldest son. Only those who have 
lived on a farm in the country know how hard the 
work is. When James was five years old he was 
sent to school, a mile and a half away, and as this 
was a very long walk for so young a boy, his sister 
often carried the little boy on her back. 

After a while the boy tried to learn the carpenter's 
trade, and in this effort he spent two years or so, 
going to school at intervals and studying at spare 
hours at home. So he mastered grammar, arith- 
metic and geography. After that he became a sort 
of general help and book-keeper for a manufacturer 
in the neighborhood at $14 per month " and found," 
and this was to him a very great advance. But not 
being well treated there, he soon left and took to 
chopping wood — at one time cutting about twenty-five 
cords for some $7. Then having read some tales 
of the sea, sailors' stories, such as you have often 
read, he wanted to be a sailor ; but when he applied 
for a place on the great lake, he looked so like a 
landsman from the country that no captain w r ould 
engage him. So he went to the canal, and found 



PRESIDENT GAEFIELD. ^\ 

employment in leading or driving horses or mules on 
the tow-path. But he was soon promoted to be a 
deck-hand and steersman, and often falling into the 
water (once almost being drowned) and meeting 
some other mishaps, he concluded that "following 
the water " was not his forte, and he abandoned it. 
By this time he had saved some money, and his 
brother Thomas lent him some more, and with 
another young man and a cousin he went to a 
neighboring town to the academy. These young 
fellows rented a room, borrowed some simple cooking 
utensils, a table and some chairs, made beds and 
filled them with straw, and set up house-keeping, 
and went to the academy. 

Young Garfield spent three years at this academy, 
doing odd jobs of carpenter work when he could, 
and so eking out a livimr. Then he went to an 
eclectic institute, and paid his way in part by doing 
the janitor's work of sweeping the floor and making 
the fires. Here he prepared himself to enter the 
junior class in a higher college, and, after some de- 
lay, he entered that class in Williams College, 
Massachusetts. 

While pursuing his college course at Williams he 
filled his vacations by teaching in district schools in 
the neighborhood until his graduation, in 1856, at 
twenty-five years of age-— quite advanced, you see, 
in years for a college graduate. 

Then he went back as a teacher to his eclectic in- 



72 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

stitute, became a professor of Greek and Latin, and 
then at twenty-eight years of age became a Senator 
in the Ohio Legislature. When the war broke out in 
1861, while still a member of the State Senate, the 
Government commissioned him as colonel of a regi- 
ment. and he did good service in the State of 
Kentucky in driving out the rebels. In a few 
months he was promoted to be brigadier-general. So 
he went on distinguishing himself wherever he was 
placed, and. having been assigned for duty to the 
Army of the Cumberland, fighting his last battle at 
Chickamauga, his gallantry was so conspicuous and 
so successful that within a fortnight he was made 
a major-general. 

While in the army he was elected representative 
to Congress, and on December 5. 1863. he took his 
seat in the House, the youngest member of Con- 
gress. 

Some time after this, the war still going on, he 
wished to rejoin the army, but President Lincoln 
would not permit it, on the ground that his military 
knowledge would be invaluable to the government. 
After serving seventeen years in the House of Rep- 
resentatives, at times Chairman of most important 
committees, he was elected to the Senate, but before 
he took his seat he was nominated for the Presi- 
dency, and last November was elected by a large 
majority to that high office. 

On the -4th of March last he was inaugurated, and 



PRESIDENT GARFIELD. 



73 



four months afterwards (July 2d) he fell by the hand 
of an assassin. 

You know how during this long, dry, hot sum- 
mer he has been lying in Washington until the 
last two weeks, hanging between life and death ; 
and you know how tenderly and lovingly he has 
been nursed; how gently he was removed to the 
sea, in the hope that a change of air and scene would 
do what the best surgical and medical skill had failed 
to do ; and you know how last Monday night, while 
you were sleeping soundly in your beds, the bells of 
our city and all over the land were tolling the tidings 
of his death. 

He was a good man — in many respects as well 
qualified to fill the Presidential chair as any man 
who has ever sat in it. So I say it is most difficult 
to understand why he was taken away. 

Like all of you he lost his father by death at an 
early age ; as is the case with all of you his mother 
w r as poor. He struggled hard for an education, and he 
acquired it, who knows at what a cost ! He was never 
satisfied with present attainments ; he was always on 
the advance. At an early age he gave himself to the 
Lord, joining the church ; and as that branch of the 
church does not believe in the necessity of ordination 
for the ministry he preached the Gospel as a lay- 
man, as the great Faraday preached in London and 
as Christian laymen preach the same truths to you, 
and it was my purpose, formed when he was elected 



74 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

in November last, to persuade him, some time when 
he might be passing through Philadelphia, to come 
to this chapel and address you boys. This, alas, now 
can never be. 

President Garfield loved his mother. No more 
touching incident was ever witnessed than that 
which hundreds of people saw on inauguration day, 
when, after taking the oath of his high office, he 
turned immediately to his dear old mother and kissed 
her. 

Our great sorrow is not felt by us alone. All na- 
tions mourn with us. The Queen of Great Britain 
with her own hand sends messages of the sweetest, 
the most touching sympathy. She, too, is a widow 
and her children are fatherless. She sends flowers 
for Mrs. Garfield and puts her court in mourning, a 
compliment never extended before except in the case 
of death in a royal family. Other European and 
Asiatic and African governments send their sympa- 
thy — they all feel it — they all deplore it. Emblems 
of mourning are displayed in every street in our 
city, and every heart is sad. The people mourn. 

Boys, you may not be Presidents — probably not 
one here will ever be at the head of this nation ; nor 
is this of any moment; but remember it was not only 
as President of the United States that General Gar- 
field was wise and good — it was in every place where 
he was put ; whether in school, in college, in teach- 
ing, in the army, in Congress, in the President's chair, 



PRESIDENT GARFIELD. 75 

in his family and on his sick and dying bed, languish- 
ing and suffering, wasting and burning with fever, 
exhausted by wounds cruel and undeserved, he was 
always the same brave, true, real man. 

Some of you know with what profound and tender 
interest people gathered in places of prayer that 
Tuesday morning to ask that the journey from Wash- 
ington to Long Branch might be safe and prosperous, 
and how the hope was expressed, almost to assurance, 
that the Saviour would meet his disciple by the sea. 
The prayer was granted. The Lord did meet his 
disciple, not, as was so much desired, with gifts of 
healing; nothing short of a miracle could do that, but 
by a more complete preparation of the people for the 
linal issue. It came at last. And while many of us 
were sleeping quietly, telegraphic messages were 
flashing the sad intelligence everywhere that, at last, 
he was at rest. 

Now that we know that he is taken away, we 
stand in awe and amazement. We cannot yet un- 
derstand it. 

Shall we gather a few lessons from his life? 
Some of the most apparent may be mentioned very 
briefly. 

The simplicity of his character is most interesting. 
Conscious as he must have been of the possession of 
no ordinary mental force, he was never obtrusive nor 
self-assertive. What seemed to be his duty he did, 
with purpose and completeness. And his associates 



70 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

often placed him in positions of high trust and re- 
sponsibility. 

He was an accomplished scholar. Even while en- 
grossed in Congressional duties, to a degree which 
left him little or no time for recreation, he did not 
fail to keep himself fresh in classic literature. It is 
said that a friend returning from Europe, and desir- 
ing to bring him some little present, could think of 
nothing more acceptable than a few volumes of the 
Latin poets. 

When his life comes to be written by impartial 
hands, it will be found that along with his great sim- 
plicity and his high culture there will be most promi- 
nent his devotion to principle. This was his great 
characteristic. I have no time, and this is not the 
place, to speak of his adherence, under strong adverse 
influences, to his sound views on the great currency 
question which has occupied so much the attention 
of Congress. 

In a not very remote sense his death is to be 
attributed to his devotion to principle. That great 
and most discreditable contest at Albany might have 
been settled weeks before it was, although in a very 
different manner, if the President could have yielded 
his convictions. He did not yield, and he was 
slain. 

The funeral services in the capitol are over and 
the men whom Mrs. Garfield chose as the bearers of 
her husband's coffin were not members of the cabinet, 



PRESIDENT GARFIELD. 77 

nor senators, nor judges of the Supreme Court, any 
of whom would have been honored by such a service, 
but they were plain men, of names unknown to us, 
members of his own little church. 

They are gone. They have taken his worn and 
wasted and mutilated form, all that remains in this 
world of the strong, pure life that was not yet fifty 
years old, to the beautiful city by the lake, and 
there within sight and almost within sound of the 
waves of the great inland sea, they will to-morrow 
lay him to rest until the morning of the resur- 
rection. 

What use shall we make of this deplorable cal- 
amity ? Shall our faith in the prevalence of prayer 
be weakened ? God forbid that we should so distort 
his teachings. " Nay, but, man, who art thou that 
repliest against God ? " 

Our prayers are answered, not as w T e wished, and 
almost insisted, but in softening the hearts of the 
people and drawing them as they have never before 
been drawn towards the Great Ruler of the universe, 
and in uniting the people, and also in promoting a 
better feeling between the different sections of our 
country than has been known for half a century. 
And if, in addition to this, the people would only 
learn to abate that passion for office which has been 
so fatal to peace, and would be content to allow fit- 
ness for office to be the only rule of appointment, 



78 GIRAED COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

then a true civil service would be a heritage for the 
securing of which even the sacrifice of a President 
would seem not too great a price. 

"And the archers shot at King Josiah, and the king 
said to his servants, Have me away for I am sore 
wounded. His servants therefore took him out 
of that chariot, and put him in the second chariot 
that he had, and they brought him to Jerusalem, 
and he died and was buried. And all Judah and 
Jerusalem mourned for Josiah." 2 Chron. xxxv. 
23, 24. 



THE CASE OF THE UNEDUCATED EM- 
PLOYED. 

March 25, 1888. 

A distinguished lawyer of our city delivered an 
address before one of the societies in the venerable 
University of Harvard on this subject : " The Case 
of the Educated Unemployed." With an intimate 
knowledge of his subject, and with rare felicity of 
thought and expression, he set before his audience, 
most of whom were either in the learned professions 
or preparing to enter them, the overcrowded condi- 
tion of those professions, especially that of the law, 
a preparation for which is supposed to imply a more 
or less thorough academic or collegiate education. 

I have a different task ; for I would show the im- 
portance of education to the workers with the hand, 
whether in the mills, the shops, or among the various 
trades and occupations. By education I do not mean 
that of the colleges, or of the common schools merely, 
but also that which is acquired sometimes without 
the advantage of any schools. And I particularly 
desire to show that an uneducated worker, whatever 
be his work, is at an immense disadvantage with one 

179) 



§0 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

who is engaged in the same kind of work, and who is 
more or less educated. 

A mechanic may be well trained ; may have more 
than his share of brains ; may be highly successful 
in his business ; indeed, may have acquired a large 
property, and have very high credit, and may hardly 
know how to write his name. A man may have 
scores or hundreds of men in his employment, and 
be conducting business on a very large scale, indeed, 
and yet be so ignorant of accounts that he is en- 
tirely at the mercy of his book-keeper, and may be 
so defrauded as to be on the very brink of ruin and 
not know it until it is almost too late. In the course 
of a long business life more than one such case has 
come under my observation. A man may be par- 
tially educated, able to cast up accounts, able to keep 
books by double entry (and no other kind of book- 
keeping is worthy of the name), and yet not be able 
to write a simple agreement in good English, nor un- 
derstand clearly the meaning of such a paper when 
written by another. 

Very many of the business failures that occur are 
due to the fact that the person or firm did not know 
how to keep accounts. This is not confined to people 
of small business. How often after a failure are we 
told " that the man was very much surprised at his 
condition ; he thought he was all right ; he could not 
account for his failure, and that in a short time he 
would have his books in such a shape that he would 



THE CASE OF THE UNEDUCATED EMPLOYED. g]_ 

be able to make a statement to his creditors and ask 
their advice. It would require ten days or so, how- 
ever, before he could tell how he stood." Why, if the 
man had been an educated business man, and an 
honest man, he would have known in twenty-four 
hours how he stood. 

The great majority of people who are employed 
are not educated. They do not know how to do in 
the best manner, that which they have to do. Per- 
haps a good definition of education, as the word is 
applied to a working man, may be that he knows 
how to do that which he has to do, in the very best 
way. 

Education may be of three kinds, viz. : 

That of the schools. 

Self -education . 

That of trade or business. 

That of the schools. And this is the best of all ; 
for the whole of one's time is given to it ; and if you 
are so inclined you may go through the whole course, 
as provided in this school. And all this with text- 
books, instruments and other appliances, absolutely 
free of cost. A boy, therefore, who passes through 
the entire course of study here, has superior oppor- 
tunities of acquiring a most substantial education. 

Certainly the education of the schools is the best ; 
and let me urge you with all seriousness to make the 
best use of your opportunities. You can never learn 
as easily as now. You are young. You are not 



g2 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

burdened with cares. Do not relax your efforts in 
the least ; do not yield to weariness ; do not think 
you know enough already ; do not be impatient lest 
others of your own age, who have already left school 
to go to work, get ahead of you in trade or in any kind 
of business ; if they have the start of you, they may 
not be able to keep it ; and depend upon it, in the 
long run you will overtake and pass them, other 
things being equal, if you have a better school educa- 
tion than they have. When you are told that young 
men who are well educated are thereby unfitted or 
unwilling to take the lowest places in trade or busi- 
ness, do not believe it. I know the contrary. The 
better the school education you have, and the more 
you know, the more valuable you will be to your 
employer. 

Another kind of education is called, but most in- 
accurately, self -education. All that I mean by it is, 
that education which one acquires without teachers. 
As so defined, it may be divided into two parts, viz. : 
the incidental and the direct. 

Let me speak first of the incidental. 

I mean by this that education that comes to us 
from society. 

You cannot live alone, and you ought not to if you 
could. You seek companions, or other persons will 
seek you. Let your associates be those whose friend- 
ship will be an instruction to you, rather than simply 
a means of social enjoyment. There are young 



THE CASE OF THE UNEDUCATED EMPLOYED. §3 

people of both sexes who, without being vicious, are 
utterly weak and foolish, idle and listless, drifting 
along a current, the end of which they do not care 
to think of. They are living for this life only, with 
no thought of the future, no ambition, mere butter- 
flies, who float in the sunshine when the sun is shin- 
ing, but who, in a dark and cloudy day, are bored 
and miserable, and utterly useless. Sometimes they 
are pleasant enough to chat with for a few minutes, 
but to be shut up to such companionship as this, 
would be intolerable. Society has a large element 
of this description, and you are likely to see it in 
your daily life. 

But this is not the worst phase of life among the 
young people with whom you may be thrown. There 
are worse elements than this. There are those who 
are depraved to a degree quite beyond their age; who 
have given themselves up to work all uncleanness 
with greediness ; who put no restraint on their incli- 
nations ; in whose eyes nothing is pure or sacred ; 
who have no respect for that which is wholesome or 
decent; who are the devil's own children, and who 
are not ashamed of their parentage. And to such 
baleful, deadly influences and associations will you be 
exposed, my young friends, and you may not be ap- 
prised of their true character until it is too late. 

But there are direct means of education, so called. 

The first of these which I mention is the use of 
books. This is unquestionably the best means. I 



g4 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

am supposing that you have some taste for reading ; 
if you have not, it is hardly worth while for me to 
speak, or for you to listen. I know some people who 
rarely read a book, and I pity them. They seern to 
think that all that is necessary to read is the daily 
newspaper. I do not say that such persons are neces- 
sarily very ignorant, for very much may be learned 
from the daily paper. But the newspaper does not 
pretend to supply all that you need, to fit you for a 
life of business, either as a dealer in merchandise, a 
professional man or a mechanic. No; you must read 
books, not only for entertainment and recreation, but 
for information and culture, which you can obtain 
nowhere else. If there is no public library within 
your reach, seek out some kind-hearted man or 
woman who has books, and who will be willing to 
lend them to one who is in search of knowledge. I 
well remember a gentleman in my early life who 
did this kind office for me before I was able to buy 
books, and there are such now who will do the same 
for you. 

If you have little knowledge of books, you ought to 
ask the advice of some practical friend to point out 
such as you may most safely and properly read. 
For if left to your own judgment or taste, you will 
probably waste valuable time, or be discouraged by 
an attempt to read something not immediately neces- 
sary or appropriate. But do not attempt to follow 
an elaborate plan of reading, such as you will find 



THE CASE OF THE UNEDUCATED EMPLOYED. g5 

detailed in some books, for you are very likely to be 
discouraged by the greatness of the task. Such lists, 
I fancy, are made out by scholars who have read al- 
most everything, and to whom reading is no task 
whatever, and who have plenty of time. Do not 
attempt to read too many books, nor too much at a 
time, and do not be disappointed or discouraged if 
you are not able to remember or put to good account 
all that you read. You cannot always know what 
particular kind of food has afforded you the most 
nourishment. You may rest assured, however, that 
as every morsel of food that you take and are able to 
digest does something to build up and develop your 
system, or repair its waste, so every book or paper 
that you read, that is wholesome, does something, you 
may not know how much, to strengthen or develop 
your mind. 

There are books that you read for entertainment 
or recreation, and that are written for that purpose 
only. You may read such; indeed, you ought to 
read them, for you need, as everybody else needs, rec- 
reation and amusement, and there is much of the 
purest and best of this that you can get from books. 
But you must not make the mistake of supposing that 
most, or even a very large proportion, of your reading 
can be of this character. You would not think of 
making your daily meals of the articles of food that 
you enjoy as the sweets of your meals. You would 
not think of living on sponge-cake and ice-cream for 



85 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

a regular diet. You might as well do so, as to read 
only the light and humorous matter that was never 
intended for the mental diet of a working man. No. 
If you would attain the real object of reading and 
study, you must read and study books and papers 
that tax the full powers of your mind to understand 
them. This will soon strengthen the quality of your 
mind, even as the exercise of your muscles in work 
or play will develop a strength of body that the idle 
or lazy youth knows nothing of. 

If you would know how to make yourself master 
of any book that you read, form the habit, if the 
book is your own, of making notes with a pencil in 
the margin of the pages ; but if the book is not your 
property, or in any case, take a sheet of paper and 
write at the end of every chapter questions on the 
matter discussed, and the answer to such questions 
will probably bring out the author's meaning so fully 
that you will have absorbed the book and made it 
your own ; for, as an eminent American author has 
said, " thought is the property of whoever can enter- 
tain it." 

I said just now that the daily newspaper does not 
pretend to supply all that you need to fit you for a 
life of business, either as a dealer in goods, or as a 
mechanic or clerk. But the daily paper is a most 
important means of education — so important that no 
one can afford to ignore it. Now-a-days one cannot 
be well informed who does not read the newspaper. 



1 

THE CASE OF THE UNEDUCATED EMPLOYED. gf 

The whole world is brought before us every morning 
and evening, and, if we do not read the news as it 
comes, we shall not know what we ought to know. 
It is not necessary to read everything in a daily 
paper ; there are some things that it will be better 
for you not to read. You need not read all the 
editorials, brilliant as some of them are, for some- 
times they discuss subjects that are not at all inter- 
esting nor useful to you. The newspaper from which 
I make the most clippings is one which is the fullest 
of advertisements, but which sometimes has nothing 
whatever in it that I read. But when it does discuss 
a subject of interest, it is apt to leave nothing further 
to be said. 

But to read with the most advantage one ought to 
have within easy reach a dictionary, an atlas and, 
if possible, an encyclopedia. Then you can read 
with profit, and the mere outlines which the news- 
paper gives can be filled up by reference to books 
which give more or less complete histories. 

The political articles which appear in the height 
of a campaign are hardly worth reading, unless you 
think of entering politics as a money-making busi- 
ness, which I sincerely hope none of you think of 
doing. And I am sure that the full accounts of 
crime, and especially the details of police reports 
and criminal trials, you will do well to pass by and 
not read. I really believe that a familiarity with 
these details prepares the way, in many instances, 



I 

gg GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

for the commission of crime, just as the reading of 
accounts of suicide sometimes leads to the act itself. 

Some of the best minds in our country, and in the 
world, are now employed ii? writing for the periodi- 
cals and magazines. No one can be well informed 
without reading something of the vast amount of 
matter which is thus poured out before him. I have 
not named the newspapers nor the magazines which 
you may read with the most profit ; but your teachers 
can advise you what to read. Bather is it important 
for you to know what not to read. Many of the 
most popular and the most useful books that have 
been published within the last quarter of a century 
have appeared first in the pages of a weekly or 
monthly paper. The best thoughts of the best 
thinkers sometimes first see the light in such pages. 

Besides the newspaper and the literary magazine, 
there are scientific periodicals, which are of essential 
value to a worker who wishes to be well informed in 
any of the mechanical arts. The Scientific Ameri- 
can is, perhaps, the best of this class, both in the 
beauty of its illustrations and in the high quality of 
its contributions. The Popular Science Monthly is a 
periodical of a wider range and more diversified 
character. These periodicals, if you are not able to 
subscribe for them as individuals or in clubs, you 
may find in the public library. But let me urge you 
to turn away from "dime novels." Not because they 
are cheap, but because they are often unwholesome 



THE CASE OF THE UNEDUCATED EMPLOYED. 39 

and immoral. The vile, fiery, poisonous whiskey 
which so many wretched creatures drink until the 
coatings of the stomach are destroyed, and the brain 
is on fire, is no more fatal to the health and life, than 
is the immoral literature I speak of, to the mind and 
soul of him who reads. There is an abundance of 
good literature that is cheap — do not read the bad. 

Having now spoken of the education you may get 
in the schools, and that which you may acquire for 
yourselves, if you have the pluck to strive for it, 
either in the society which you cultivate, or more 
directly from books, whether read as an entertain- 
ment and recreation, or, better still, by careful study; 
or through the daily newspaper, or the periodical, 
whether literary or scientific; or, what is best of all, 
that which is decidedly religious; I turn now to 
the education which you will acquire when you work 
day by day at your trade or business. 

Let me beg of you to consider the great value of 
truthfulness in all your training. Hardly anything 
will help you more to reach up towards the top. 
And when you are at the head of an establishment 
of your own or somebody else's (and I take it for 
granted you will be at the head some day), whether 
it be a workshop or factory of any kind, or a store, 
no matter what, a fixed habit of keeping your word, 
of not promising unless you are certain of keeping 
your promise, will almost insure your success if you 
are a good workman. How many good mechanics 



90 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

have utterly failed of success because they have not 
cared to keep their promises ? A firm of high reputa- 
tion agrees to supply certain articles of furniture at a 
time fixed by them. The time comes but the articles 
do not come. A call of inquiry is made and new 
promises are made only to be broken. Excuses are 
offered and more promises given ; then incomplete 
articles are sent; then more delays, until, when pa- 
tience is nearly exhausted, the work is finished. 
Then comes the bill and there is a mistake in it. 
The whole transaction is a series of disappointments 
and misunderstandings. Will you ever incline to go 
to that place again ? 

It is usual for miners of coal to place their sons, as 
they become ten or twelve years of age, at the foot 
of the great breakers to watch the coal as it comes 
rattling and broken down the great wire screens, and 
catch the pieces of slate and throw them to one side 
and allow only the pure coal to pass down into the 
huge bins, from which it is dropped into the cars and 
taken to market. To an uneducated eye there is 
hardly any perceptible difference between the coal 
and the slate. But these little fellows soon become 
so quick in the education of the eye, that they can 
tell in an instant the difference. When the boy 
grows older he graduates to the place of a mule 
driver, and has his car and mule, which he drives 
day .by day from the mouth of the mine to the 
breaker. Then when he begins to be of age he fixes 



THE CASE OF THE UNEDUCATED EMPLOYED. 



91 



his little oil lamp in the front of his cap, and goes 
down into the mines with his pick and becomes a 
miner of coal. It seems a dreary life to spend most 
of one's time under the ground, shut out from the sun- 
shine and from the pure air. And most of these 
men having no education, and never having been 
urged to seek one, are content to spend all their days 
in this manner. But occasionally there is one who 
feels that he is capable of better things than this. 
And I know one at least, who began his work at the 
foot of a coal breaker and worked his way up through 
all these stages, as I have told you, and who deter- 
mined to do something better for himself. So he 
gave much of his leisure (and everybody has some 
leisure) to study ; nor was he discouraged by the 
difficulties in his way. He persevered. He rose to 
be a boss among the men ; then having saved some 
money, instead of wasting it at the tavern, he bought 
his teams, and then bought an interest in a coal mine, 
and became a miner of his own coal, and had his 
men under him, and has grown to be a rich man, and 
is not ashamed of his small beginnings nor of his 
hard work. This is only one instance of success in 
rising from a low position to a high one. 

The same thing is going on all around us and we 
see it every day. It would hardly be proper to give 
you names, but I could tell you of many within my 
own knowledge who, from positions of extremely 
hard labor and plain living, have risen to be the 



92 GIEAKD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

bead men in shops and other places which they en- 
tered at the lowest places. Such changes are con- 
tinually occurring. And there is no reason what- 
ever, except your indifference, to prevent many of 
you from becoming, if God gives you health, the head 
men, in the places where you begin work as subordi- 
nates or in very low positions. And I tell you what 
you know already, that there is plenty of room for 
advancement. It is the lowest places that are full to 
overflowing. TTho ever heard of a strike among the 
chiefs of any industry? Xo. indeed. They have 
made themselves indispensable to their employers 
and they don't need to strike. And there is hardly 
a youth who cannot by strict attention to business, 
and conscientious devotion to the interests of his em- 
ployer, make himself so invaluable that he need not 
join any trades union for protection. Do the vast 
army of clerks in the various corporations, or in the 
great commercial houses, or in the public service, or 
in the army and navy — do these people ever band 
themselves in any associations like the trades unions ? 
They know better than that ; they accomplish their 
purposes in better ways. If the working classes, so 
called, were better educated, they would not suffer 
themselves to be led by the nose by people who will 
not themselves work, who will not touch even with 
their little fingers the burdens which are crushing 
the life out of the deluded ones whom they are lead- 
ing to folly. It is a true education that is needed, a 



THE CASE OF THE UNEDUCATED EMPLOYED. 93, 

true conscience that must be cultivated, to enable 
men to do their own thinking, and to determine for 
themselves what are their best interests. 

I urge you all to seek that higher and better edu- 
cation which will make you true men. You have 
now the great advantage of the education of the 
school. I have tried very simply, but not the less 
earnestly, to show you how you can fit yourselves 
for high places. It is for you to say whether you 
will avail yourselves of these plain hints. No earthly 
power can force you to do that which you will not 
do. You may lead a horse to a brimming fountain 
of water, but if he is not thirsty, no coaxing nor 
threatening nor beating can make him drink. I 
may show you, to demonstration, the abundant foun- 
tain of learning, but I can't make you drink, or even 
stoop to taste the stream, if you are not thirsty. I 
can't make you study, however great the advantage 
to you, or however much they who are interested in 
you desire that you should. 

Every year this question which I have been press- 
ing upon you becomes more and more important. 
The great colleges of the country are graduating 
their thousands of students, many of whom will com- 
pete with you for the high places in the mechanic 
arts. So are the public schools of the country send- 
ing out hundreds of thousands, many of them having 
the same aim. Technical schools, teaching the me- 
chanic arts, are multiplying. Great changes have 



94 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

been made recently in our own city in this respect. 
The Spring Garden Institute is doing a noble work 
in this way. Our own college is moving in the same 
direction, and soon it will be sending out its hun- 
dreds every year to compete for places in the shops, 
with this great advantage, that you Girard boys have 
a school education — the best that you are able to re- 
ceive, and you must not let any others go ahead of 
you. 

Look at the poor, ignorant people from abroad who 
sweep our streets — look at the stevedores w T ho load 
and unload the ships — look at the men who carry 
the hod of mortar or bricks up the high and steep 
ladders — look at the drivers and the conductors on 
our street cars, the most hard worked people among 
us — and are you not sure that most of these people 
are -uneducated ? No one wants to be at the bottom 
all the time. We may have been there at the first ; 
but those who have made the most progress are gen- 
erally those who have had the best education. I 
know that education is not a sure guarantee of suc- 
cess ; many other things enter into the consideration 
of the question ; but I am saying that, other things 
being equal, he who knows the most will do the best. 
There are, alas, many instances of the sons of the 
rich, who have been well educated, who have every- 
thing provided for them, who have no stimulus, no 
spur ; who have no regular occupation, and need not 
have any ; many of whom sink into idleness and dis- 



THE CASE OF THE UNEDUCATED EMPLOYED. 95 

sipation, and their fine education goes for nothing. 
But you are not of this class. You will have to make 
your way in the world by your own exertions. 

I shall fail of my duty if I do not say some words 
about such boys as sometimes stand at the corners 
of the streets in large or small companies and amuse 
themselves by smoking and chewing tobacco, telling 
bad stories and making remarks upon those who pass 
by. I am sure much of this arises from thoughtless- 
ness ; but I wish to point out the exceeding impro- 
priety of this behavior. I have known ladies to 
cross the street and, at much inconvenience, go quite 
out of their way rather than pass within hearing 
of these boys and young men. What right has any 
one to make the streets disagreeable to any passenger, 
to block up the way or make loose or rude remarks, 
or defile the pavement over which I walk ? 

All this most serious waste of time is probably be- 
cause no one has particularly called attention to it. 
The time may come when you will recall the words 
of advice which you hear to-day, and you may regret 
when it is too late that you turned a deaf ear to what 
was said. 

I have now tried, in as much detail as the time will 
permit, to show the importance of that education 
which will enable you to rise in your trade or busi- 
ness, whatever it may be, to the upper places ; and I 
have tried to show that a true ambition leads one to 




qq GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

strive to be chief rather than a subordinate, to be a 
foreman rather than a journeyman. 

But, after all, everything will depend upon your- 
selves and upon God. There is no royal road to 
education; the very meaning of the word shows this; 
the mind must be drawn out, worked over, developed, 
rounded, hammered, somewhat as a blacksmith puts 
a piece of rough iron in the coals, keeps it there until 
it is red-hot, then draws it out, lays it upon his anvil 
and hammers it, turning it over and over, striking it 
first on this side and then on that, rounding it off; 
then when it cools thrusting it among the coals again, 
then hammering away again until he has brought the 
rough piece of iron to the size and shape he wishes, 
when he allows it to cool and harden. If you are 
willing to work your mind into the shape you want 
it, you will surely bring yourself to the front among 
active, ingenious and successful men. But this 
means hard work, and work all the time. 

Now if you mean to avail yourselves of any of the 
hints which I have given you, if you really mean to 
succeed, if you are not content to be workers low 
down in the scale of industry, if you mean to rise 
rather than to be obscure, if you intend to be well-to- 
do men, instead of living from hand to mouth, you 
must grapple with the subject with all your might 
and keep at it all the time. And you must keep out 
of the streets at night, away from the taverns and 
from the low theatres, and from gambling dens, and 



THE CASE OF THE UNEDUCATED EMPLOYED. 97 

from other places which I will not name ; and, in 
short, you must be true Americans, for there is no 
truer type of manhood in all the world than a real 
American ; and nowhere else in all the world has a 
poor boy so good an opportunity to be and do all this, 
as in our own good city of Philadelphia. 

7 



WILLIAM PENN. 

October 22, 1882. 

In the early autumn of the year 1682, a vessel 
with her bow pointing towards the west was making 
her way slowly across the Atlantic ocean. She was 
a small craft, rigged as a ship, and crowded with 
emigrants. The discomforts of a long and tiresome 
voyage, the very small accommodations, the horror 
of sea-sickness, were in this vessel aggravated by the 
breaking out of that most awful of all scourges, the 
small-pox. In a very short time, out of a population 
of one hundred, thirty passengers died. No record 
is left of the incidents of that voyage except this ; 
but it is easy to imagine that all the circumstances 
were as deplorable as they could well be. 

After a weary time of head winds and calms, in 
about seven weeks, this ship, the " Welcome," came 
within the capes of the Delaware bay. 

The most distinguished person on that little ship 
was William Penn. He had left his home in Eng- 
land, embarking with his trusty friends in a vessel 

only one-tenth the size of the ships of our American 

(993 



100 



GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 



Line, to come to Pennsylvania. He had bought the 
whole province from the government of England for 
the sum of £16,000 sterling, which, measured by 
our money, is about $80,000, and this money was 
due to him for services rendered and money loaned 
to the government by his father, an admiral in the 
English navy. 

About the 24th of October the vessel reached the 
town of Newcastle, where Penn landed and was cor- 
dially received by the people of that little village. 
Afterwards they came farther up the river to Up- 
lands, now the town or city of Chester. Then, leav- 
ing the vessel here, they ca,me in a barge (Penn and 
some of his principal men) to the mouth of Dock 
creek, the foot of what is now known as Dock street, 
where they landed, near a little tavern called the 
Blue Anchor. 

There was already a settlement on the shore of 
the Delaware river, and the people, mostly Swedes, 
had built a little church somewhat farther down the 
stream. The entire land between the Delaware and 
Schuylkill rivers, and for a mile north and south, 
was owned by three brothers, Swedes, named Swen. 
Penn bought this tract from them, and at once pro- 
ceeded to lay out his new city. When he bought 
the whole province from the crown he desired to call 
it New-Wales, because it was so hilly, but the king 
insisted on calling it Penn's Sylvania, in memory of 
the admiral, William's father. But when the new 



WILLIAM PENN. 101 

city came to be named, Penn having no one to dis- 
pute his wish, called it by that word, of whose mean- 
ing we think so little, Philadelphia — brotherly 
love. Two months after this he met the Indians, it 
is said, under a great elm tree in the upper part of 
the city, in what we now call Kensington, and con- 
cluded that treaty which has been said to be the only 
treaty that was ever made without an oath, and that 
was never broken. Shortly after this Penn pro- 
ceeded to lay out the city, and, as a distinguished 
English author has said, he must have taken the 
ancient Babylon for his model, for this was the first 
modern city that was laid out with the streets cross- 
ing each other at right angles. 

The charter which Penn received from Charles the 
Second, King of England (the original of which is in 
the capital at Harrisburg, on three large sheets of 
parchment), makes him proprietary and governor, 
also holding his authority under the crown. He at 
once therefore set about making a code of laws as 
special statutes, which with the common law of Eng- 
land should be the laws of the province. One of 
these special laws was this : "Every one, rich or poor, 
was to learn a useful trade or occupation ; the poor to 
live on it : the rich to resort to it if they should be- 
come poor." And I do not know what better law he 
could have enacted. 

When the news of Penn's arrival and cordial re- 
ception reached England and the continent of Europe, 



102 



GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 



the effect was to arouse a spirit of emigration. Al- 
though Perm's first thought and purpose was to 
found a colony, where he and others who held the 
religious views of the Society of Friends might wor- 
ship without hindrance (which liberty was denied 
them in England), the people from other countries 
in Europe came here in great numbers for other 
purposes. The population therefore multiplied rap- 
idly, and the people were generally such as had 
determined to brave the privations of a new country, 
to make themselves a home where life could be lived 
under better conditions than in the old countries, un- 
der the harsh government of tyrannical kings. This 
emigration was stimulated also by the very liberal 
terms which the governor offered to new-comers ; for 
to actual settlers he offered the land at about ten dol- 
lars for a hundred acres, subject, however, to a quit- 
rent of a quarter of a dollar an acre per annum for- 
ever; and this may be the origin of that ground- 
rent instrument which is almost peculiar to Pennsyl- 
vania, and which is such a favorite investment for 
our rich men. 

After a stay of two years Penn returned to Eng- 
land, where he had left his wife and children ; the 
care of the government having been left with a coun- 
cil, of which Thomas Lloyd was president, who kept 
the great seal. 

Not long after his return to England the king, 
Charles the Second, died, and having no son he was 



WILLIAM PENN. ^Qg 

succeeded by his brother, James Duke of York, as 
James the Second. Although Perm was on the most 
cordial terms with the new king, as he had been 
with Charles, this did not secure him from the re- 
peated annoyances and persecutions of those who 
detested his religion. So severe was the treatment 
to which he was subjected, and such was his personal 
danger from unprincipled men, that he escaped to 
France. But not being able nor willing to bear this 
exile, he returned to England, was tried for his 
offence against the law of the church and was ac- 
quitted. After this he came to America again, in- 
tending to spend the rest of his life here, but he re- 
mained only two years. 

The rest of his life was spent in England, but it 
was a life broken by persecutions and trials at law 
and other annoyances, the expenses of which, added 
to the losses by the unfaithfulness of his stewards, 
were so great as seriously to involve him in financial 
embarrassments ; and he was even compelled to mort- 
gage his great estate in Pennsylvania to relieve him- 
self; but the interest annually payable on such en- 
cumbrance was so heavy that he felt the necessity 
of relieving himself of the property entirely, and he 
offered to sell it to the crown. While the matter 
was under consideration, his health began to decline; 
however, the terms were agreed upon, but while the 
papers were in the course of preparation he died 
peacefully at Rushcombe, in Buckinghamshire, July 



^04 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

30, 1718, and was buried five days after in the burial 
ground belonging to Jordan's meeting house. 

Such is the briefest outline of the life of the founder 
of this commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and of this 
city of Philadelphia. 

Let us see now what there was in this life which 
we may find it interesting to recall and dwell upon \ 
what there was in it which may be useful for us to 
consider in its application to ourselves. 

William Penn was born in the city of London on 
the 14th of October, 1644, in the parish of St. Cath- 
arine's, near the Tower. His father was an admiral 
and his grandfather was a captain in the English 
navy. Then, as now, it was the custom of English 
families of good condition to send their boys away 
from home to school. This boy, an only son, was 
therefore sent to school near the town of Wan stead, 
in Essex, called Chigwell. Here he remained until 
he was thirteen years old, with no incident particu- 
larly worthy of notice, except that he was, at the age 
of twelve, brought under deep religious impressions, 
which, however, like many other boys, he soon threw 
aside. He seems to have been apt to learn, and was 
fond of the childish sports belonging to his age. For 
two years after leaving school, he was under private 
instruction at home, until he was fifteen years old, 
when he entered the University of Oxford. Here he 
devoted himself most diligently to his studies and be- 
came a successful student. But this did not prevent 



WILLIAM PENN. 205 

him from entering most heartily into the sports which 
were common to young men of his quality. He was 
very fond of boating, fishing, shooting, and other 
pleasures, and he was extremely handsome ; but he 
avoided dissipation of all kinds, thus proving that the 
keenest enjoyment of healthful sports is quite con- 
sistent with a pure life. If the college students of 
this day would believe and act upon this principle, 
it would be better for them and better for the world. 

With this hearty enjoyment of sports, and this 
diligent application to study, he had a very tender 
sympathy and love for domestic animals. Towards 
those that were the most helpless, he evinced a kind- 
liness that was almost womanly. 

But he had a strong will, and it was impossible to 
turn him aside from a course of duty, when he was 
satisfied that it was real duty. During his school 
and college life there were many seasons of religious 
interest in his experience, and he was at last brought 
(under the preaching of a member of the Society of 
Friends named Thomas Loe) to declare himself a 
member of that society. He therefore refused to at- 
tend the services of the Church of England. The 
custom of wearing surplices by Oxford students, 
which had been abolished in Cromwell's time, had 
been restored by Charles; but Penn, when he came 
out as a religious man, threw off his surplice and re- 
fused to wear it. This act was bad enough in the 
eyes of the authorities; but his zeal went further 



206 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

than this, and, in common with some others of the 
same way of thinking, he so far forgot himself as to 
attack other students and tear off their surplices. 
This very grave offence could not be overlooked, and, 
admiral's son though he was, he was expelled from 
the University of Oxford. This was a great blow to 
his father, who was building the fondest hopes on the 
advancement of his son at college and his career as 
a courtier. No persuasion, however, could induce 
the son to reconsider his conduct, and his father at 
last flogged him and drove him from the house. 
Some time after this, through the intercession of the 
mother, the young man was brought back to his 
home ; and his father, in the hope that a change of 
scene and circumstances would work a change in the 
lad's feelings, sent him to Paris, and to travel on the 
continent. 

While in Paris he studied the French language, 
and read some books in theology, and went as far as 
Turin, in Italy, from whence, however, he was re- 
called to take charge of a part of his father's affairs. 
He then studied law for a year, which no doubt was 
of some help to him in the founding of his common- 
wealth. Then his father sent him to take care of 
his estates in Ireland, at that time under the vice- 
royalty of the Duke of Ormond. He entered the 
army here, and did good service too; and was, ap- 
parently, so much pleased with his new life that he 
suffered the only portrait of him that was ever painted, 




WILLIAM PENN. ^Q^ 

to be taken when he was wearing armor and in uni- 
form. This picture, or a copy of it, may now be 
seen at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, in 
Spruce street, above Eighth. 

About this time he came again under the influence 
of the preacher Loe, and was recalled by his father, 
who remonstrated with him on his new mode of life, 
but with no success whatever. He would not give 
up his new religion. His father tried to compromise 
the matter with him, and he even went so far as to 
propose to his son, that if he would remove his hat 
in the presence of the king and the Duke of York 
and his father, as his superiors, their differences 
might be healed ; but the son, believing that the re- 
moval of his hat would be dishonorable to God, abso- 
lutely refused. 

His life for some time after this was stormy 
enough. He came out boldly and in defiance of law 
as a preacher of the Society of Friends ; and was re- 
peatedly imprisoned, sometimes in the Tower of Lon- 
don and sometimes in the loathsome prison of New- 
gate, from which places he was released by the inter- 
cession of the Duke of York and his father and other 
friends. 

Those were very rough times, not likely, let us 
hope, to be repeated. Society was very corrupt at 
the highest sources, and religion was more violent 
and aggressive in its measures then than now. The 
world has grown wiser and better — there is more 



108 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

toleration, more of the Spirit of the Master now than 
then, and in our favored land every soul can worship 
God as he may choose to do. 

William Penn was a statesman. He founded this 
great commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He estab- 
lished a code of laws that were in advance of his 
time. He stipulated that the law of primogeniture, 
that law which gives the lands of the father to the 
oldest son, with little or no provision for younger 
sons, that law which is the corner-stone of the crown 
of England, should have no place in this new com- 
monwealth. The property of a parent dying with- 
out a will should be equally divided among his chil- 
dren. Penn was a statesman in the broadest sense 
of the term. His laws were for the greatest good of 
the greatest number. He treated the Indians as if 
they were human beings, and not as if they were 
brute beasts. Indeed, he never treated the brutes as 
the Indians have been treated even in our day by 
harsh and unscrupulous agents of the government. 
Whether he was exactly just in his dealings with 
Lord Baltimore, the settler of Maryland, I do not 
know. Perhaps he was not. We know this misun- 
derstanding gave him great trouble, and was indeed 
the prime cause of his return to England. 

Penn was a rich man. The inheritance left him 
by his father was handsome, and he could have lived 
most comfortably upon it. But when he received 
from the crown the charter which made him the 



WILLIAM PENN. 



109 



owner of Pennsylvania, he was the largest land- 
holder, except sovereigns, known in history. He did 
not use his wealth for personal indulgence, or for 
luxurious living for himself or his family. He be- 
lieved that he held his property as a trustee, and 
that he had no right to waste it. He might have 
lived the life of an ordinary English nobleman (for it 
is said his father was offered a peerage), but such a 
life had no charms for him. 

Penn was a conscientious man. I mean by this 
that he followed his inner convictions, without re- 
gard to consequences. What he wanted to know 
was, whether a given thing was right and according 
to his way of determining what the right was ; and 
he did it if it were a duty, without flinching. No 
personal inconvenience, no consideration for the views 
or wishes of other people, was allowed to stand in the 
way of his duty, as he understood it. It was the 
custom of that time for gentlemen to wear swords, 
as some gentlemen now carry canes, and with no 
purpose except as an ornament or part of the dress. 
Some time after he joined the Society of Friends, 
and while still wearing his sword, he said to his 
friend George Fox, "Is it consistent with our prin- 
ciples and our testimonies against war for me to wear 
my sword ? " When Fox replied, " Wear thy sword 
as usual, so long as thy conscience will permit it." 
This friendly rebuke led him to lay aside his sword 
never to resume it. 



210 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

William Perm was a religious man. He was called 
by the Holy Spirit at the early age of twelve years, 
as I have already said. He resisted that call and 
many others, until under faithful preaching he could 
resist no longer, when he yielded himself to the 
divine call and became an open professor of the 
principles of the Society of Friends. This was a 
very different thing, so far as personal comfort was 
concerned, from professing religion in the ordinary 
forms ; for this was to join a hated sect, and bear all 
the contempt and persecution that belonged to a pro- 
fession of religion in the early days of Christianity, 
when men, women and children perilled their lives 
in the service of the great Master. But Penn cared 
not for the cost ; he was ready to go to prison, and to 
death if necessary, for his opinions. He did go to 
prison over and over again, and bore right manfully 
all that was put upon him. He was not idle, how- 
ever, in the prison. He preached to his fellow-pris- 
oners ; he wrote pamphlets ; he did everything in his 
power to make known to others the good tidings of 
salvation that had come to him. He wrote a great 
many letters, and they were all full of the spirit of 
religion. He wrote treatises on religious truth, that 
might have been written by a systematic theologian; 
but among the most practical things he wrote was 
the address to his children, that it would be well if 
all people would read, and which, with a few excep- 



WILLIAM PENN. ]_]_;£ 

lions, is as appropriate for the people of to-day as it 
was for those who lived two hundred years ago. 

If Penn had not been a religious man, his life had 
not been worth recording. He would have lived the 
life that was lived by almost all men of his class at 
that time, a life of unrestrained worldliness and 
luxury. The Almighty, who had great purposes in 
store for the New World, to be wrought out by the 
instrumentality of man, could have chosen another 
man, but he chose Penn. 

Such is the story of the life of a man who was one 
of the world's heroes. His name will never die. 
There is a large literature on the subject of his life, 
some of which you will find in your own library, if 
you choose to look further into it. This is all that I 
feel it proper to say to you to-day about it. 

Boys, it is a great thing to have been born in 
Pennsylvania, as all of you were. And this could 
hardly be said of any other congregation in this city 
to-day. This is a great commonwealth. As to its 
size, it is (leaving out Wales) nearly as large as the 
whole of England; As to great rivers and mountains 
and mines and metals, as to forests and fields, we are 
far in advance of anything of the kind in England. 
No valleys on earth are more beautiful or more pro- 
ductive than the valleys of our own Pennsylvania. 

It is a great thing, boys, to have been born in the 
city of Philadelphia, as most of you were. It was 
founded by a great and good man. There are, in the 



212 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

civilized world, but three cities that are larger than 
ours. There is no city, except London, that has so 
many dwelling-houses, and there is none anywhere 
in all the world where the poor man who works for 
his living can live so happily and so well. 

In this State, in this city, your lot is cast. You 
will soon many of you take your place among the 
citizens, and have your share in choosing the men 
who make and execute the laws. Some of you will 
be the men who make and execute the laws. Wil- 
liam Penn founded this commonwealth, not only to 
provide a peaceable home for the persecuted mem- 
bers of his own society, but to afford an asylum for 
the good and oppressed of every nation ; and he 
founded an empire where the pure and peaceable 
principles of Christianity might be carried out in 
practice. When you come to take your part in the 
duties of public life, see to it that you forget not his 
wise and noble purpose. 



OUR CONSTITUTION. 

October, 1887. 

I am about to do what I have never done — what 
has probably never been done b}^ any other person 
in this chapel. I propose to give you a political 
speech, but not a partisan speech ; indeed, I hardly 
think you will be able to guess, from anything I 
say, to which of the two great political parties I 
belong. 

I do not go to the Bible for a text — though there 
are many passages in the holy Scriptures which 
would answer my purpose very well — but I take for 
my text the following passage from the will of Mr. 
Girard : 

"And especially I desire that by every proper 

MEANS, A PURE ATTACHMENT TO OUR REPUBLICAN INSTI- 
TUTIONS, AND TO THE SACRED RIGHTS OF CONSCIENCE AS 
GUARANTEED BY OUR HAPPY CONSTITUTIONS, SHALL BE 
FORMED AND FOSTERED IN THE MINDS OF THE SCHOLARS." 

A few weeks ago our city was filled to overflow- 
ing with strangers. They came from all parts of the 
land, and some from distant parts of the world. Our 

8 (113} 



114 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

railways and steamboats were crowded to their ut- 
most capacity. Our streets were thronged ; our 
hotels and many private dwellings were full. It 
was said that there were half a million of strangers 
here. The President of the United States, the mem- 
bers of the Cabinet, many members of the national 
Senate and House of Representatives, the general 
of the army and many other generals, the highest 
navy officers, judges of the Supreme Court of the 
United States and of the State courts, the governors 
of most of the States — each with his staff — soldiers 
and sailors of the United States, and many regiments 
of State troops (the Girard College cadets among 
them) — a military and naval display of twenty-five 
thousand men — representatives of foreign states, an 
exhibition of the industrial and mechanic arts, in a 
procession miles in extent, such as was never seen in 
all the world before ; receptions and banquets, public 
and private ; a general suspension of most kinds of 
business — all this occurred in the streets of our city, 
only a few weeks ago. What did it mean? 

It was the One Hundredth Anniversary of the 
adoption of the Constitution of the United States, 
and it was considered to be an event of such impor- 
tance that it was well worth while to pause in our 
daily work ; to give holiday to our schools ; to still 
the busy hum of industry; to stop the wheels of 
commerce ; to close our places of business. 



OUR CONSTITUTION. ^15 

One hundred years ago the Constitution of the 
United States of America was adopted in this city. 

What had been our government before this time ? 
Up to July, 1776, there had been thirteen colonies, all 
under the government of Great Britain. In the lapse 
of time, the people of these colonies, owing allegiance 
to the king of England, and subjected to certain 
taxes which they had no voice in considering and 
imposing, because they had no representation in the 
Parliament which laid the taxes, became discontented 
and rebellious, and in a convention which sat in our 
own city of Philadelphia, on the 4th of July, 1776, 
they united in a Declaration of Independence of 
Great Britain, and announced the thirteen colonies 
as Free, Sovereign and Independent States. 

This, however, was only a declaration; and it 
took seven long years of exhausting and terrible 
war (which would have been longer still but for 
the timely aid of the French nation) to secure that 
independence and have it acknowledged by the 
governments of Europe. 

Before the declaration, each of the colonies had a 
State government and a written constitution for the 
regulation of its internal affairs. Now these colonies 
had become States, with the necessity upon them 
(not at first admitted by all) of a general compact or 
agreement, by which the States, while maintaining 
their independence in many things, should become a 
confederated or general government. 



116 



GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 



More than a year passed before the Constitution, 
which the Convention agreed upon, was adopted by 
a sufficient number of the States to make it binding 
on all the thirteen ; and I am glad to know and to 
say that my own little State of Delaware was the 
first to adopt it. 

NOW, WHAT IS THE CONSTITUTION? How does it 

differ from the laivs which the Congress enacts every 
winter in Washington ? 

First, let me speak of other nations. There are 
two kinds of government in the world — monarchical 
and republican. And there are two kinds of monar- 
chies — absolute and limited. An absolute monarch, 
whether he be called emperor or king, rules by his 
personal will — his will is the law. One of the most 
perfect illustrations of absolute or personal govern- 
ment is seen on board any ship, where the will of the 
chief officer, whether admiral or captain, or whatever 
his rank, is, and must be, the law. From his orders, 
his decisions, there is no appeal until the ship reaches 
the shore, when he himself comes under the law. 
This is a very ancient form of government, now 
known in very few countries calling themselves civ- 
ilized. 

The other kind of monarchy is limited by a con- 
stitution, imwritten, as in Great Britain, or written, 
as in some other nations of Europe. In these coun- 
tries the sovereigns are under a constitution ; in some 
instances with hardly as much power as our Presi- 



OUR CONSTITUTION. 



117 



dent. They are not a law unto themselves, but are 
under the common law. 

The other kind of government is republican, demo- 
cratic or representative. It is, as was happily said 
on the field of Gettysburg, long after the battle, by 
President Lincoln, " a government of the people, by 
the people, for the people." These few plain words 
are well worth remembering — "of," " by," "for" the 
people. These are the traits which distinguish our 
government from all kinds of monarchies, whether 
absolute or limited, hereditary or elective. 

After the w T ar between Germany and France, in 
1870, the German kingdoms of Prussia, Hanover, 
Saxony, Wurtemberg, Bavaria, with certain small 
principalities, each with its hereditary sovereign, 
were consolidated or confederated as the German 
empire, and the king of Prussia, the present Fred- 
erick William, was crowned emperor of Germany. 

France, however, after that war, having had 
enough of kings and emperors, adopted the repub- 
lican form of government. So that now there are 
three republics in Europe, viz. : France, Switzerland, 
and a little territory on the east coast of Italy, San 
Marino. 

So that almost all of Europe, all of Asia, and all of 
Africa (except Liberia), and the islands of Australia, 
and the northern part of North America (except 
Alaska), are under the government of monarchs; 
while the three countries of Europe already men- 



118 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

tioned, and our own country, and Mexico, and the 
Central American States, and all South America 
except Brazil (and some small parts of the coast of 
South America under British rule), are republics.* 

Now let us come back to our own government and 
see what is, and whether it is better than any form 
of monarchy ; and if so, why. 

What is the Constitution of the United States ? 
The first clause in it is the best answer I can give : 

" We, the people of the United States, in order 
to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure 
domestic tranquillity, provide for the common de- 
fence, promote the general welfare, and secure the 
blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do 
ordain and establish this Constitution for the United 
States of America." 

Then follow the articles and sections setting forth 
the principles on which it was proposed to build up- 
a nation in this western world. The thirteen States 
each had its constitution and its laws, but this instru- 
ment was intended to serve as the foundation of the 
general government. Until these States had formed 
their constitutions, there was no republican govern- 
ment in the world except Switzerland and San Ma- 
rino, and these lived only on the sufferance of their 
powerful monarchical neighbors. All South America 

* One of our most distinguished citizens said some years ago that he 
believed the tendency of things was towards the English language, the 
Christian religion, and republican government for the human race. 



OUR CONSTITUTION. ;QQ 

was under Spanish rule, and Mexico was a mon- 
archy. 

The great principle of a republic is that people 
have a right to choose their own rulers, and ought to 
do it. The divine right of hereditary monarchy we 
deny. It is often said that the English government 
is as free as ours ; but it is not quite true, and will 
not be true until every citizen is permitted to vote 
for his rulers. Whether so much liberty is perfectly 
safe for all people is well open to question ; but it is 
a fact here, and if people would only behave them- 
selves properly there would be no danger whatever 
in it. And if there is danger here, it comes not from 
native-born citizens trained under our free institu- 
tions. The sun does not shine on a broader, fairer 
land than this; and under that divine Providence, 
without whose gracious aid we could not have 
achieved and cannot maintain our Constitution, we 
have nothing whatever to fear for the present or to 
dread in the future, but the evil men among us — the 
Anarchists and Socialists, the scum and off-scouring 
of Europe — who, with no fear of God before their 
eyes, so far forget the high aims of this government 
and their own obligations to it as to seek to overthrow 
its very foundations. 

The highest and best types of monarchical govern- 
ments are in Europe, and it is with such that we seek 
comparison when we insist that ours is better. 

Monarchies are hereditary. They descend from 



220 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

father to the oldest son and to the oldest son of the 
oldest son where there are sons. England has rejoiced 
in two female sovereigns at least, Elizabeth, and Vic- 
toria, the present sovereign ; but they came to the 
throne because there was no son in either case to 
inherit. The heir-apparent, whatever his character 
or want of character, must reign when the sovereign 
dies, because, as they say, he rules by divine right. 
We insist on electing our President for a term of 
years, and if we like him we give him another term ; 
if we do not like him, we drop him and try another. 
I wish the term of office of the President were longer, 
and that he could serve only one term. Perhaps it 
will come to that ; and I think he would be a more 
independent, a better official under this condition. 

What is the difference between the Constitution 
and the laws ? 

The Constitution is the great charter under which, 
and within which, the laws are made. No law that 
Congress may pass is worth the paper it is printed on 
if it is contrarv to the Constitution. Such laws have 
been passed ignorantly, and have died. 

A very simple illustration is at hand. The consti- 
tution of this College is Mr. Girard's will. This is 
our charter. The laws which the Directors make must 
be within the provisions of the will or they will not 
stand. For instance, the will directs that none but 
orphans can be admitted here ; and the courts have 
decided that a child without a father is an orphan. 



OUR CONSTITUTION. 121 

The L)irectors, therefore, cannot admit the child who 
has a father living. The will says that only hoys can 
be admitted ; therefore no law that the Directors can 
make will admit a girl. Nor can the Directors make 
a law which will admit a colored boy ; nor a boy 
under six nor over ten years of age ; nor a boy born 
anywhere except in certain States of our country — 
Pennsylvania, New York and Louisiana. It would 
be unconstitutional. I think now you see the dif- 
ference between the Constitution and the laws. 

Now, again, is our government better than a mon- 
archy ? and why ? 

Because the men of the present time make it, and 
are not bound by the traditions of far-off times. 
There are improvements in the science of govern- 
ment as in all other human inventions, as the cen- 
turies come and go. Man is progressive ; he would 
not be worth caring for if he were not. If the pres- 
ent age has not produced a higher and better develop- 
ment in all essentials, it is our own fault, and is 
not because men were perfect in the past or cannot 
be better in the present or in the future. There- 
fore when our Constitution is believed not to meet 
the requirements of the present day there is a way 
to amend it, although that way is so hedged up that 
it cannot possibly be altered without ample time for 
consideration. As a matter of fact, the Constitution 
has been altered or amended fifteen times since its 



122 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

adoption ; and it will be changed or amended as often 
as the needs of the people require it. 

We believe our form of government to be better 
than any monarchy because the people choose their own 
law-makers. The Congress is composed of two houses 
or chambers : the members of the Senate, chosen by 
the legislatures of the States, two from each State, to 
serve for six years ; the members of the House of 
Representatives (chosen by the citizens), who sit for 
two years only, unless re-elected. The Senate is sup- 
posed to be the more conservative body, not easily 
moved by popular clamor ; while the Representatives, 
chosen directly and recently by the voters, are sup- 
posed to know the immediate wants of the people. 
The thought of two houses grew probably from the 
two houses of the British parliament. 

We cannot have an hereditary legislature like the 
House of Lords in the British parliament, whose 
members sit, as the sovereign rules, by divine right, 
as they say, and with the same result in some in- 
stances : for the sovereign may be a mere figure-head, 
or only the nominal ruler, while the cabinet is the 
real government, and the House of Lords long ago 
sunk far below the House of Commons in real influ- 
ence. There is no better reason for this than the 
fact that the people have nothing to do with the 
House of Lords and the sovereign, except to depose 
and scatter them when they choose to rise in their 
power and assert themselves. 



OUE CONSTITUTION. ^23 

We can have no orders of nobility under our Con- 
stitution. There can be no privileged class. All 
men are equal under the law. I do not mean that 
all persons are equal in all respects. Divine Provi- 
dence has made us unequal. Some are endowed 
naturally with the highest mental and physical gifts 
and distinctions ; some are strong and others weak. 
This has always been so and always will be so. 
Some have inherited or acquired riches, while others 
have to labor diligently to make a bare living. Some 
have inherited their high culture and gentle manners 
and noble instincts, which, in a general sense, we 
sometimes call culture ; and others have to acquire 
all this for themselves — and it is not very easy to get 
it. So there is no such thing as absolute equality r 
and cannot be; but before the law, in the enjoyment 
of our rights and in the undisturbed possession of 
what we have, we are all equal, as we could not be 
under a monarchy. Here there is no legal bar to 
success ; all places are open to all. 

There can be no law of primogeniture under our 
Constitution. By this law, which still prevails in 
England, the eldest son inherits the titles and estates 
of the father, while the younger sons and all the 
daughters must be provided for in other ways. 
Some of the sons are put in the church, in the army 
or the navy, or in the professions, such as law and 
medicine ; but it is very rare indeed that any son of 
a noble house is willing to engage in any kind of 



\2i GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

business or trade, for they are not so well thought 
of if they become tradesmen. 

There can be no state church, no establishment, un- 
der our Constitution. In England the Episcopal 
Church, and in Scotland the Presbyterian Church, 
are established by law; and until within the last 
seventeen years the Church of England was by law 
established in Ireland ; and it is now established in 
Wales ; and in other countries of Europe the Koman 
Catholic Church and the Lutheran Church and the 
Greek Church are established by law. In countries 
where there is a national church, it derives more or 
less of its support from taxing the people, many of 
whom do not belong to it ; but in this land there is 
no established church ; and there never can be, let us 
hope and believe. 

Under our form of government we need no stand- 
ing army. We owe this partly to the fact that we 
are so isolated geographically that we do not need to 
keep an army. I heard the general of our army 
say, a short time ago, that the regular army of the 
United States is a fiction — only 25,000 men. (You 
saw as many troops a few weeks ago in one day as 
are in all our army.) " The real army," he added, 
"is composed of every able-bodied citizen; for all 
are ready to volunteer in the face of a common 
enemy." Our territory is immensely large already, 
and it will probably be larger, but it will not again 
be enlarged as the result of war. When we look at 



OUR CONSTITUTION. }25 

the nations of Europe, and see the immense num- 
bers of men in their standing armies, we can't help 
thanking God that we are separated from them by 
the wide Atlantic, and that we have a republican 
government, and have no temptation to seek other 
territory, and are not likely to be attacked for any 
cause. In the armies of Great Britain, Germany, 
Russia, Austria, Italy, Turkey, are more than ten 
millions of men withdrawn from the cultivation of 
the soil and from the pursuits of commerce and manu- 
factures. In Italy alone the standing army is said 
to be 750,000 men ! The withdrawal of so many 
men from peaceful occupations makes it necessary 
to employ women to do work which in our country 
women are never asked to do. I have seen a woman 
drawing a boat on a canal, and a man sitting on the 
deck of that boat smoking his pipe and steering the 
boat. I have seen a woman with a huge load of 
fresh hay upon her head and a man walking by her 
side and carrying his scythe. I have seen women 
yoked with dogs to carts, carrying the loads that 
here would be put in a cart and drawn by a horse. 
I have seen women carrying the hod for masons on 
their heads, filled with stone and mortar. I have 
seen women carrying huge baskets of manure on 
their backs to the field, and young girls breaking 
stone on the highway. Did you ever hear of such 
things here ? See what a difference ! The men in 



126 GIEAED COLLEGE ADDKESSES. 

the army eat up the substance which the women 
produce from the soil. 

But nowhere else in the world is the dignity of 
labor recognized as here. They do not know the 
meaning of the words. For in most other countries 
it is considered undignified, if not ungenteel, to be 
engaged in labor of any kind. A man who is not 
able to live without work is hardly considered a gen- 
tleman. To work with the hands is degrading ; is 
what ought to be done by common people only, and 
by people who are not fit to associate with gentlemen 
and ladies. It is not so in this country. Here, a 
man who is well educated and well behaved, and up- 
right and honorable in his dealings with men, who 
cultivates his mind by reading and observation, and 
is careful of the usages of good society, is fit com- 
pany for any one. He may rise to any place within 
the gift of his fellow-citizens, and adorn it. This is 
not so elsewhere. And think of a young girl hardly 
out of her teens, with no special preparation for such 
a distinction, but educated and accomplished, be- 
coming the wife of the President of the United 
States, and proving herself entirely worthy of that 
high position ! Could any other country match this ? 

Now what is the effect of all this freedom of 
thought and action on the people? Well, it is not to 
be denied that there are some disadvantages. There 
is danger that we may over-estimate the individual 
in his personal rights, and not give due weight to the 



OUR CONSTITUTION. 127 

people as a community. There is danger of selfish- 
ness, especially among young people. There is not 
as much respect and reverence for age, and for those 
above us, and for the other sex, as there ought to be. 
Young people are very rude at times, when they 
should always be polite to their superiors in age or 
position. At a little city in Bavaria the boys com- 
ing out of school one day all lifted their hats to me, 
a stranger ! That would be an astounding thing in 
a Philadelphia street ! In riding in the neighbor- 
hood of the city here, if I speak civilly to a boy by 
the roadside, I am just as likely as not to get an im- 
pudent answer. 

But in spite of these defects, which we hope will 
never be seen in a Girard College boy, the true effect 
of training under our republican institutions is to 
make men. There is a wider, freer, fuller develop- 
ment of what is in man than is known elsewhere. 
Man is much more likely to become self-reliant, self- 
dependent, vigorous, skillful, here — not knowing how 
high he may rise, and consciously or unconsciously 
preparing himself for anything to which he may be 
called. And for woman, too, where else does she 
meet the respect that belongs to her ? Where else 
in the world do women find occupation in govern- 
ment offices, on school boards, at the head of charit- 
able and educational institutions? With few ex- 
ceptions, such as Girton College, where are there in 
any other country such colleges as Vassar or Wei- 



228 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

lesley, and as the Woman's Medical College, almost 
under the walls of our own ? 

I have already kept you too long. But a few 
words and I am done. I am moved by the injunc- 
tion of Mr. Girard in his will not only to say these 
things, but by this grave consideration also. Every 
boy who hears me to-day, within fifteen years, if he 
lives, unless he is cut off by crime from the privilege, 
will be a voter. You will go to the polls to cast 
your votes for those who are to have the conduct of 
the government in all its parts. I want to make 
you feel, if I can, the high destiny that awaits you. 
You are distinctive in this respect — you are all 
American boys. This can be said of no other assem- 
bly as large as this in all this broad land. You have 
it in your power, and I want to help you to it, and 
God will if you ask him — you have it in your power 
to become American gentlemen. And I believe that 
an American gentleman is the very highest type of 
man. 

God, give us men. A time like this demands 

Strong minds, great hearts, true faith and ready hands: 

Men whom the lust of office does not kill ; 

Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy ; 
Men who possess opinions and a will ; 

Men who have honor, men who will not lie ; 
Men who can stand before a demagogue 

And scorn his treacherous flatteries without winking ; 
Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog 

In public duty and in private thinking. 




J& 



(Ma^//<i<- 



JAMES LAWRENCE CLAGHORN. 



When a man has lived a long, busy, useful and 
successful life it seems proper that something more 
than the ordinary obituary notices in the daily pa- 
pers is due to his memory. This thought moves me 
to speak to you to-day of a gentleman who died on 
August 25, 1884, while a Director of the Girard Col- 
lege, and of whom it seems appropriate that some- 
thing may be said to you in this chapel. 

Mr. James L. Claghorn was a distinguished citizen 
of Philadelphia. He was born here on the 5th of 
July, 1817. His father, John W. Claghorn, was a 
merchant of excellent standing, who in the latter 
years of his life gave much time and thought to be- 
nevolent institutions. At the age of fourteen years 
James left school to go into business. You boys 
know how very incomplete an education at school 
must be which ends when the boy is fourteen years 
old. But you don't know until your own experience 
proves it how hard it is for a half-educated boy to 
compete for the high places in life or in business with 
boys of equal natural ability, who have had the full 

9 d29) 




130 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

advantage of a liberal school education. At four- 
teen, then, James Claghorn turned his back on 
school and went to work in earnest. For it was an 
auction store that he entered, and the work there 
was usually harder work than in other kinds of 
stores. The hours of labor were longer — earlier and 
later — and the holidays more rare than in ordinary 
commercial houses. 

There is no record of the early years of his busi- 
ness life ; but it is not difficult to imagine the hard- 
ships to which a young lad of that time would be 
subjected. We can't suppose that any indulgence 
was allowed him because his father was one of the 
partners in the firm ; neither he nor his father would 
have permitted such distinction. 

The boy must have been industrious ; for in such 
a house there was no place for an idle lounger. He 
was not afraid of work, for he was always at it ; he 
did not spare himself, else some other boy would have 
done his share and got ahead of him ; he must have 
been faithful, not one who works only when his mas- 
ter's eye is on him — not shirking any hard work — 
not forgetting to-day what he was told yesterday — 
not thinking too much of his rights or his own par- 
ticular work, but doing anything that came to hand 
— looking always to the interest of the firm, and 
trusting the future for a recognition of his faithful- 
ness. 

And he must have been patient. Many rough 



JAMES LAWRENCE CLAGH0RN. ]_3;|_ 

words, many hasty and passionate words are spoken 
to young boys, and must have been spoken to this 
boy, and may have hurt him ; but there is good rea- 
son to believe from the character he built up that he 
knew how to hold his tongue and not answer back. 
Not every boy has learned that useful lesson ; and 
hence the many outbreaks of passion and the fre- 
quent discharge of boys who will u answer back " 
when they are reproved. 

And I think also that he must have been of a 
bright and cheery disposition and well mannered. 
Some young fellows who have to make their way in 
the world seem not to know the importance of a good 
address; in other words, politeness, good breeding. 
Nothing impresses one so favorably at first meeting a 
stranger as good manners. A frank, hearty greeting, 
n bright, cheerful face, a manly bearing, a willing- 
ness to consider others, a desire to please for the sake 
of giving pleasure, are of great importance. On the 
•contrary, sullenness, sluggishness, indifference, sel- 
fishness are all repulsive, and though allowance will 
be made at first for the existence of such qualities, 
yet they will hardly be tolerated long in a young 
person, and they will certainly unfit him for a suc- 
cessful career. I did not know Mr. Claghorn when 
he was a young lad ; but I can hardly suppose that 
the kindly, genial, hearty man in middle and later 
life could have been a morose, sullen, sluggish, ill- 
mannered boy. 



132 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

I have said that Mr. Claghorn left school while 
still a boy ; but we must not infer that he supposed 
his education was complete with the end of his school 
life, for it is very evident that he must have given 
very much of his leisure to self-improvement. We 
do not know how his evenings were spent when not 
in the counting-house ; but he must have given a 
good deal of time to reading ; and it is not likely that 
the books which he read were such as are to be found 
now at any book-stand, and in the hands of so many 
boys as they go to and fro on their errands — books 
which are simply read without instruction, and which 
sometimes treat of subjects which are unreal, extrav- 
agant, coarse and brutalizing. Doubtless he was fond 
of fiction. All boys of fair education and refined 
taste are more or less fond of fiction ; but we can 
hardly suppose that he gave too much of his time ta 
such reading, else he could not have become the 
strong business man that he was. At a very early 
age he became fond of art, and gathered about him as 
his means would permit engravings and pictures such 
as would cultivate his taste in that direction. When 
he could spare the money he would buy an engrav- 
ing, if the subject or the author interested him ; so> 
that he became, in the latter part of his life, the 
owner of one of the largest collections of engravings 
in the whole country. Indeed, he became a noted pa- 
tron of art, and especially was he desirous of encour- 
aging native art, so that at one period he had more 






JAMES LAWRENCE CLAGHORN. J 3 3 

than two hundred paintings, the work of American 
artists ; for at that time he was more desirous of en- 
couraging native artists, especially if they were poor, 
than he was in making collections of the great mas- 
ters. Many a picture he bought to help the artist, 
rather than for his own gratification as a collector. 
Further on in life he became deeply interested in the 
Academy of the Fine Arts, which was then in Chest- 
nut street above Tenth. Subsequently he became its 
President, and very largely through his influence and 
his personal means that fine building at the south- 
west corner of Broad and Cherry street, which all 
of you ought to visit as opportunity is afforded, was 
erected as a depository of art. The splendid build- 
ing of the Academy of Music at Broad and Locust 
street, is also largely indebted to Mr. Claghorn for its 
erection. 

But I am anticipating, and we must now go back 
to Mr. Claghorn in his counting-house. No longer a 
boy — an apprentice — he has grown to manhood, and 
has become a member of the firm, taking his father's 
place. Now his labors are greatly increased ; the 
hours of business, which were long before, are longer 
now; he begins very early in the morning, before 
sunrise in the winter season, and is sometimes de- 
tained late in the evening, the long day being entirely 
devoted to business ; and no one knows, except one 
who has gone through that sort of experience, how 
much labor is involved in such a life ; but not only 



134 • GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

his labors — his responsibilities are greatly increased. 
He becomes the financial man in the firm ; he is the 
head of the counting-house; he has charge of the 
books and the accounts. For many years no entry 
was made in the huge ledgers except in his own 
handwriting. The credit of the house of Myers & 
Claghorn becomes deservedly high. A time of great 
financial excitement and distress comes on. This 
house, while others are going down on the right and 
left like ships in a storm, stands erect with unim- 
paired credit, and with opportunities of helping other 
and weaker houses which so much needed help. The 
name of his firm was a synonym of all that is strong 
and admirable in business management. 

So he passed the best years of his whole life in 
earnest attention to business, snatching all the leisure 
he could for the gratification of his passion, it may be 
called, for art, until the time came when, having ac- 
quired what was at that time supposed to be an 
abundant competency, he determined to retire from 
business. Now he appears to contemplate a long- 
rest in a visit to other countries, and w r as making 
arrangements looking to a long holiday of great en- 
joyment, when the country became involved in the 
Great Rebellion. None of you, except as you read 
it in history, know what a convulsion passed over the 
country when the first gun was fired upon the flag at. 
Fort Sumter. Mr. Claghorn, full of love for his 
country and unwilling to do what seemed to him 



JAMES LAWRENCE CLAGH0RN. ^35 

almost like a desertion in her time of trial, gave up 
his contemplated foreign tour, and applied himself 
most diligently and earnestly to the duties of a true, 
loyal citizen in the support of the government. He 
was one of the earliest members of the Union 
League, and was largely interested in collecting 
money for the raising and equipping of regiments to 
be sent to the front. Three or four years of his life 
were spent in this laudable work, and in company 
with those of like mind he was largely instrumental 
in accomplishing great good. The war, however, 
came to an end — was fought out to its final and in- 
evitable issue. 

Now the desire to visit foreign countries returned 
with increased interest. His business affairs, although 
they had not been as profitable as they would have 
been if he had looked closer to them and had given 
less thought to public matters during the war, were so 
satisfactory that he could afford to put them in other 
hands for a while, and in company with his wife he 
embarked for Europe. It was to be a long holiday 
such as he had never known before. He intended to 
make an extended tour — he was not to be hurried. 
He went through England, Scotland, Ireland, France, 
Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Egypt, Palestine, Turkey, 
Greece, Austria, Kussia, Germany, Holland and Bel- 
gium. In this way he saw and enjoyed all the most 
famous picture-galleries of the old world ; and his 
long study of art in its various phases and schools 



236 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

gave him special advantages for the highest enjoy- 
ment of the great collections, public and private, 
of the old masters as well as of those of modern 
times. 

The interest of his extended tour was not, how- 
ever, limited to galleries and collections of paintings 
and statuary. He was an observer of men and 
things. His practical American mind observed and 
digested evervthine that came within his reach. 
The government of the great cities — the condition 
of the masses of the people gathered in them — the 
common people outside of the cities, their customs 
and costumes ; their way of living — in short, every- 
thing that was unlike what we see at home — he 
observed and remembered to enjoy in the retrospect 
of after years. 

It was hardly to be expected that Mr. Claghorn, 
having lived the busy life that he had lived before 
he went abroad, should have been content on his 
return to sit down in the enjoyment of his well- 
earned leisure ; and accordingly, shortly after his 
return, he became the President of the Commercial 
National Bank, one of the oldest financial institu- 
tions in our city. For several years previously he 
had been a Director in the Philadelphia National 
Bank (as his father had before him), so that he had 
had proper training for the duties of his new posi- 
tion. He became also a Manager in the Philadelphia 
Saving Fund Societ}\ the oldest and the largest 



JAMES LAWRENCE CLAGHORN. 137 

saving fund in our city. With most commendable 
diligence and industry he at once set about building 
up the bank so as to make it profitable to its stock- 
holders. Not forgetting, however, the attractions of 
art, he covered the walls -of his bank parlor with 
beautiful specimens of the choicest engravings, so 
that even the daily routine of business life might be 
enlivened by glimpses into the attractive world of 
art. 

In the year 1869, when the Board of City Trusts 
was created by act of Legislature (to which board is 
committed the vast estate left by Mr. Girard, as well 
as of the other trusts of the city of Philadelphia), 
Mr. Claghorn was appointed one of the original board 
of twelve, and from that date until his death he 
gave much time and thought to the duties thus de- 
volved upon him. He became chairman of the 
finance committee, which place he held until the end 
of his life. Although he was not so well known to 
the boys of the college as some other members of 
this board, because his duties did not require very 
frequent visits to the college, he nevertheless gave 
himself to the duties of the committee of which he 
was chairman with great interest and fidelity ; and 
the time which he gave to this great work is not to 
be measured by visits to the college, but by the time 
spent in the city office and in his own place of busi- 
ness, where his committee met him on their stated 
meetings. As I have reason to know, he had a deep 



138 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

personal interest in all the affairs of this college, and 
of the other trusts committed to our charge. 

Although the condition of his health in the latter 
part of his life made close attention to business 
very trying to him, so far as I know he never per- 
mitted his health to interfere with his business en- 
gagements. 

In this brief and fragmentary way I have tried to 
set before you some features of the life of one of our 
most distinguished citizens. In the limits of a sin- 
gle discourse as brief as this must be it is not possible 
to make this more than an outline sketch. In the 
little time that remains let me refer again for the 
purpose of emphasis to some traits in the character 
of Mr. Claghorn which will justly bear reconsidera- 
tion. 

A very large proportion of the merchants of any 
city fail in business. The proportion is much larger 
than is generally known, and larger than young peo- 
ple are willing to believe. 

In an experience of more than forty years of busi- 
ness life, during which I have had much to do with 
merchants, I have known so many failures, have seen 
so many wrecks of commercial houses, that I am com- 
pelled to regard a merchant who has maintained 
high credit for a long term of years and finally re- 
tired from business with a handsome estate as one 
who is entitled to the respect and confidence of his 
fellow-citizens. Some men grow rich as junior part- 



JAMES LAWRENCE CLAGH0RN. 139 

ners in successful business, the good management 
having been due to the ability and tact of their 
seniors ; but this can hardly be said in the present 
case. The merchant whose life we are considering 
was an active and influential partner. 

Let me say, however, that true success in business 
is not to be measured by the amount of money one 
accumulates. A man may be rich in the riches ac- 
quired by his own activity and shrewdness who is in 
no high sense a successful business man. These 
things are necessary : He should be a just man, an 
upright, honorable man, a man of breadth and solid- 
ity of character, who gathers about him some of the 
ablest and best of his fellow-citizens in labors for the 
good of others and the welfare of society. In such 
sense was Mr. Claghorn a successful business man. 

His early love of art in its various forms, the sub- 
stantial aid and encouragement he gave to young 
students in their beginnings, his deep sympathy with 
persons who in literature and art were striving for a 
living, his generous hospitality to artists, and his pub- 
lic spirit — all these had their influence in the growth 
and development of his character, and made his name 
to be loved and honored by many who shared in his 
generous sympathies. 

Mr. Claghorn's love of country, which we call 
patriotism, was signally disclosed at the outbreak of 
the war in 1861. When we remember his long and 
busy life as a merchant — broken by few or no vaca- 



140 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

tions such as most other men enjoyed — when we re- 
member that his self-culture had been of such a na- 
ture as to prepare him most admirably well for a tour 
in foreign countries, especially such countries as had 
produced the ablest, the most distinguished artists — 
we can have some idea of what it cost him to forego 
the much needed rest — to deny himself the well- 
earned pleasure of a visit to the picture galleries of 
Europe, where are gathered the treasures of the 
highest art in all the world. Many men in like cir- 
cumstances would have felt that one man, whose age 
and sedentary habits unfitted him for active service 
in the field, would hardly be missed from among the 
loyal citizens of the North — but he did not think so; 
and therefore he put aside all his personal plans, and 
in the city where he was born he remained and de- 
voted himself as one of her true, loyal citizens in 
raising money and men for the defence of the govern- 
ment. There could be no truer heroism than this, 
and right bravely and successfully he carried his pur- 
pose to the end. 

" I am permitted," said the clergyman who spoke at 
his funeral, and with his words I close these remarks, 
" I am permitted to address to you in the presence 
of the solemnity of death some few reflections that 
occur to me in memory of one whom we shall know 
no more in life. A few Saturday evenings ago I was 
walking along by a lake at a seashore home when a 
great and wondrous beauty spread itself beneath my 



JAMES LAWRENCE CLAGH0RN. J4J 

eye. It was one of those inimitable pictures that 
rarely come to one. In the foreground there lay a 
lake with no ripple on its surface. It was a calm 
and sleeping thing. A shining glory was in the 
western sky. The sun had gone, but where he dis- 
appeared were indications of beauty — one of the most 
beautiful afterglows I have ever seen. It was not 
one of the ordinary things, and as I looked at it there 
came many reflections. Here is one of them. It 
seems quite applicable this morning. That which 
caused the quiet glory of the lake, that which caused 
the radiation of beauty, had gone. Its day's work 
was done. That quiet lake and streaked sky were 
the type of a picture of a busy, useful, successful life 
that had been accomplished. It was a complete 
thing. The day was done. The activity had passed 
away. It was finished just as this life. What had 
made it beautiful had gone, but he flung back monu- 
ments of beauty that made the scene as beautiful as 
good words and noble deeds make the memory of man. 
There were six of these rays. Young men, brethren 
of this community, you will do well to remember that 
anywhere and everywhere, without patience and in- 
dustry, nothing great can be done. The life departed 
was a busy one — one of busy usefulness. The cry 
that came from him was, 'I must work; I must be 
busy.' Live as this man did, that your life may be 
one that can be held up as an example and a light to 
voung men of the coming generations. One ray of 



242 girard college addresses. 

beauty was his sterling truthfulness. It is a splendid 
thing to be trusted by your fellows. Another ray was 
his prudent foresight. It was characteristic of him, 
and it is a splendid thing to have. Another ray 
that welled out of him was his striking humanity. 
There was one continual trait in his character. I 
would call it manhoodness. There was another feat- 
uiv — his deep humility." 

Such were some of the traits of character of a man 
who lived a long life in the city where he was born. 
If no distinctive monument has been erected to his 
memory, there are the " Union League." " The Acad- 
emy of the Fine Arts," and " The Academy of 
Music." with which his name will always be asso- 
ciated : and. what is better still, there are many 
hearts that throb with grateful memories of an un- 
selfish man. who in time of sore need stretched out 
his hand to help, and that hand was never empty. 
And you will remember, you Girard boys, that this 
man who did so much for his native city and for his 
fellow-citizens was not nearly so well educated at the 
age of fourteen when he left school as many of you 
are now. See what he did ; see what some of you 
may do ! 



THE LEAF TURNED OVER. 

January 1, 1S88. 

Some weeks ago I gave you two lectures on " Turn- 
ing Over a New Leaf." One of the directors of this 
college to whom I sent a printed copy said I ought to 
follow those with another on this subject : " The 
Leaf Turned Over." I at once accepted this sugges- 
tion and shall now try to follow his advice. 

Most thoughtful people as they approach the end 
of a year are apt to ask themselves some plain ques- 
tions — as to their manner of life, their habits of 
thought, their amusements, their studies, their busi- 
ness, their home, their families, their companions, 
their plans for the future, their duty to their fellow- 
men, their duty to God ; in short, whether the year 
about to close has been a happy one ; whether they 
have been successful or otherwise in what they have 
attempted to do. 

The merchant, manufacturer or man of business 
of any kind who keeps books, and whose accounts 
are properly kept, looks with great interest at his 
account book at such a time, to see whether his busi- 
ner has been profitable or otherwise, whether he has 

(143) 



144 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

lost or made money, whether his capital is larger or 
smaller than it was at the beginning of the year, 
whether he is solvent or insolvent, whether he is able 
to pay his debts or is bankrupt. 

And to very many persons engaged in business for 
themselves, this is a time of great anxiety, for one 
can hardly tell exactly whether he is getting on 
favorably until his account books are posted and the 
balances are struck. If one's capital is small and 
the result of the years business is a loss, that means 
a reduction of capital, and raises the question whether 
this can go on for some years without failure and 
bankruptcy. Many and many a business man looks 
with great anxiety to the month of December, and 
especially to the end of it, to learn whether he shall 
be able to go on in his business, however humble. 
And, alas ! there are many whose books of account 
are so badly kept, and whose balances are so rarely 
struck, or who keep no account books at all, that 
they never know how they stand, but are always un- 
der the apprehension that any day they may fail to 
meet their obligations and so fail and become bank- 
rupt. They were insolvent long before, but they did 
not know it ; and they have gone on from bad to 
worse until they are ruined. Others, again, are 
afraid to look closely into their account books — afraid 
to have the balances struck, lest they should be con- 
vinced that their affairs are in a hopeless condition. 
Unhappy cowards they are, for if insolvent the 



THE LEAF TURNED OVER. ^45 

sooner they know it the better, that they may make 
the best settlement they can with their creditors, if 
the business is worth following at all, and begin 
again, " turning over a new leaf." 

I do not suppose that many of you boys have ever 
thought much on these subjects ; for you are not in 
business as principals or as clerks, you have no mer- 
chandise or produce or money to handle, you have no 
account books for yourselves or for other people to 
keep, to post, to balance, and you may think you 
have no interest in these remarks ; but I hope to be 
able to show you that these things are not matters 
of indifference to you. 

The year 1887, which closed last night, was just 
as much your year as it was that of any man, even 
the busiest man of affairs. When it came, 365 days 
ago, it found you (most of you) at school here : it left 
all of you here. And the question naturally arises, 
what have you done with this time, all these days 
and nights ? Every page in the account books of 
certain kinds of business represents a day of busi- 
ness, and either the figures on both the debit and 
the credit side are added up and carried forward, or 
the balance of the two sides of the page is struck and 
carried over leaf to the next page. 

So every day of the past year represents a page in 
the history of your lives : for every life, even the 
plainest and most humble, has its own peculiar his- 
tory. Your lives here are uneventful ; no very start- 
10 



146 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

ling things occur to break the monotony of school 
life, but each day has its own duties and makes its 
own record. Three hundred and sixty-five pages of 
the book of the history of every young life here 
were duly filled by the records of all the things done 
or neglected, of the words spoken or unspoken, of 
the thoughts indulged or stifled; these pages with 
their records, sad or joyful, glad or shameful, were 
turned over, and are now numbered with the things 
that are past and gone. When an accountant or 
book-keeper discovers, after the books of the year 
are closed and the balances struck, that errors had 
crept in which have disturbed the accuracy of his 
work, he cannot go back with a knife and erase the 
errors and write in the correct figures; neither can 
he blot them out, nor rub them out as you do ex- 
amples from a slate or from the blackboard; he must 
correct his mistakes; he must counteract his blunders 
by new entries on a new page. 

It is somewhat so with us, with you. Last night 
at midnight the last page of the leaves of the book 
of the old year was filled with its record, whatever it 
was, and this morning " the leaf is turned over." 
What do we see ? What does every one of you see ? 
A fair, white page. And each one of you holds a 
pen in his hand and the inkstand is within reach ; 
you dip your pen in the ink, you bend over the page, 
the thoughts come thick and fast, much faster in- 
deed than any pen, even that of the quickest short- 



THE LEAF TURNED OVER. ^47 

hand writer can put them on the page. There are 
stenographers who can take the language of the most 
rapid speakers, but no stenographer has ever yet ap- 
peared who can put his own thoughts on paper as rap- 
idly as they come into his mind. But while there is 
but one mind in all the universe that can have knowl- 
edge of what is passing in your mind and retain it 
all — the infinite mind ; and while no one page of 
any book, however large, even if it be what book- 
makers call elephant folio, can possibly hold the 
record of what any boy here says and thinks in a 
single day, you may, and you do, all of you, write 
words good or bad on the page before you. 

Let me take one of these boys not far from the 
desk, a boy of sixteen or seventeen years of age, who 
is now waiting, pen in hand, to write the thoughts 
now passing in his mind. What are these thoughts? 
No one knows but himself. Shall I tell you what I 
think he ought to write? It is something like this : 

" I have been here many years. When I came I 
was young and ignorant. I found myself among 
many boys of my own age, hardly any of whom I 
ever saw before, who cared no more for me than I 
cared for them. I felt very strange ; the first few 
days and nights I was very unhappy, for I missed 
very much my mother and the others whom I had 
left at home. But very soon these feelings passed 
away. I was put to school at once, and in the 
school-room and the play-ground I soon forgot the 



[ | S GIBABD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

things and the people about my other home. Years 
passed. I was promoted from one school to another, 
from one section to another; 1 grew rapidly in size; 
my classmates were no longer little boys; we were 
all looking up and looking forward to the school 
promotions, and I became a big boy. The lessons 
were hard, and I studied hard, for I began to under- 
stand at last why I was sent here, and to ask myself 
the question, what might reasonably be expected of 
me? Sometimes when quite alone this question 
would force itself upon me, what use am I making 
of my fine advantages, or am I making the best use 
of them? And what manner of man shall 1 be? 
For 1 know full well that all well-educated boys do 
not succeed in life — do not become successful men in 
the highest and best sense. I low do I know that I 
shall do well? Is my conduct here BUch as to justify 
the authorities in commending me as a thoroughly 
manly, trustworthy boy? Have I succeeded while 
going through the course of school studies in building 
up a character that is worthy of me, worthy of this 
great school? Can those who know me best place 
the most confidence in me ? If I am looking forward 
to a place in a machine shop, or in a store, or in a 
lawyer's office, or to the study of medicine, or to a 
place in a railroad office or a bank, am I really try- 
ing to fit myself for such a place, or am I simply 
drifting along from day to day. doing only what I am 
compelled to do and cultivating no true ambition to 



THE LEAF TURNED OVER. 



149 



rise above the dull average of my companions ? And 
then, as I look at the difficulties in the way of every 
young fellow who has his way to make in the world, 
has it not occurred to me to look beyond the present 
and the persons and things that surround me now, 
and look to a higher and better Helper than is to be 
found in this world? Have 1 not at times heard 
words of good counsel in this chapel, from the lips 
of those who come to give me and my companions 
wholesome advice? What attention have I given to 
such advice V I have been told, and I do not doubt 
it. that the great God stoops from heaven and speaks 
to my soul and offers his Divine help, and even holds 
out his hand, though I cannot see it, and will take 
my hand in his, and help me over all hard places, 
and will never let me go, if I cling to him. and will 
assure me success in everything that is right and 
good. I have heard all this over and over again: I 
know it is true, but I have not accepted it as if I be- 
lieved it; I have not acted accordingly; in fact, I 
have treated the whole matter as if it were unreal, 
or as if it referred to somebody else rather than to 
me. 

"And now I have come probably to my last year 
m this school. Before another New Year's day some 
other boy will have my desk in the school-room, my 
bed in the dormitory, my place at the table, my seat 
in the chapel. These long years, oh ! how long they 
have seemed, have nearly all passed; I shall soon go 



]-f) GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

away ; if some place is not found for me I must find 
one for myself — oh ! what will become of me ? Since 
last New Year's day two boys who were educated 
here have been sent convicted criminals to the East- 
ern Penitentiary. What are they thinking about on 
this New Year's morning? They sat on thee s 
they sang our hymns, they heard the same good 
words of advice which I have heard, they had all the 
good opportunities which all of us have : what led 
them astray ? Did they believe that the good God 
:>ed from heaven to say good words to them, hold- 

_ ait his strong hand to help them? I wonder if 
they thought they -trong enough to take care 

of themselves ? 1 wonder if they thought they could 
ithout his help? Do I think I can V " 

S me such thoughts as these ma}* be passing in 
the mind of the boy now looking at me and sitting 
not far from the desk, the boy whom I had in my 
mind as I began to speak. He is holding his pen 
full of ink. He has written nothing yet : he has 
been listening with some curiosity to hear what the 
speaker will say. what he can possibly know of a 
boy's thoughts. 

I can tell that boy what /would write if I were at 
his age. in this college, and surrounded by these cir- 
cumstances, listening to these serious, earnest words. 
I would take my pen and write on the first page of 
this vear's book, this Sundav morninsr. this New 
Years day, these words: "The leaf is turned over! 



THE LEAF TURNED OVER. ^5]^ 

God help me to lead a better life. God forgive all 
the past, all my wrong doings, all my neglect, all my 
forge tfulness. God keep me in right ways. God 
keep me from wicked thoughts which defile the soul ; 
keep me from wicked words which defile the souls of 
others." 

" But this is a prayer," you say; "do you want me 
to begin my journal by writing a prayer?" 

Yes; but this is not all. Write again. 

1. I will not willingly break any of the rules which 
an adopted for the government of our school. 

Some of the rules may scon hard to obey, and even 
unreasonable, but they were made for my good by 
those who are wiser than I am. I can obey them; 
I will. 

2. J will work harder over my lessons than ever he- 
fore, and I will recite them more accurately. 

This means hard work, but it is my duty; I shall 
be the better for it; it will not be long, for I am going 
soon ; I can, I will. 

3. / will watch my thoughts and my talk more care- 
fvlly than I have ever done before. 

If I have hurt others by evil talk I will do so no 
more. It is a common fault ; many of us boys have 
fallen into the habit of it; but for one, I will do so 
no more ; I can stop it, I will. 

4. / will be more careful in my daily life here, to 
set a good example in all things, than I have ever been 
before. 



[52 GIRARD COLLEGE AI'I»i 9£ 

The younger boys look to the older boys and imi- 
tate them closely. They watch us, our words, our 
ways, our behavior in all things. If any young fel- 
lows have been misled by me. it shall be so no n 
I will behave bo that no one shall be the w e 
doing as 1 do. This is quite within my control ; I 
. I will. 

5. / will look to God to help rm to do them thim 

For 1 have tried to do something like this bei 
and failed: it must be because I depended on my 
own Btrength. Now I will look away from myself 
and depend upon M God, without whom nothil 
stroni:-. nothing is holy." He can help me; he surely 
will, if 1 throw myself on his mercy, and by daily 
prayer and reading the Scriptures, even if only for a 
moment or two each day. I -hall >ee light and find 
peace. 

These are the things that I would write, my boy, 
if I were just a- you are. 

Shall I stop now ? May I not go a little farther 
and say some words to others her 

Teachers, prefects, governesses : these boys are all 
under vour charge, and every day. The same srood 
Providence that brought them here for education 
and support, brought you here also to teach them 
and care for them. Your work is exacting, labori- 
ous, unremitting. Some of these voumr bovs are 
trying to your patience, your temper, your forbear- 
ance, almost bevond endurance. Sometimes vou are 



Hli: LEAF Tl l:\l.i. OVER, jro 

discouraged by what seems to be the almost hopeless 
nature of your work, the untidiness, the rough man- 
ners, the ill temper, the stupidity of some of these 
young hoys. But remember that all this is inevit- 
able that from the nature of the case it must he 
so; and remember, too, that to reduce such material 
to good order, to train and educate these young lives 
that they shall he well educated, well informed, 
well mannered, polite, gentle, considerate, so they 
may he fairly well assured of a successful future, is a 
great and noble work, worthy of the ambition of the 
highest intelligence. This is exactly what the great 
founder had in his mind when he established this 
college and provide,! so munilicently lor its endow- 
ment. This is what his trustees most earnestly de- 
Bire, and the hope of which rewards them for the 
many hours they give every week to the care of this 
greal estate. We depend upon you to carry out the 
plan of instruction here, not only in the schools, but 
in the section rooms and on the play-grounds. Be 
to these older hoys their big brothers, their best 
friends. Be kind to them always, even when com- 
pelled to reprove them for their many faults. 

And to those of you who have the care of the 
younger boys, let me say: remember, they have no 
mothers here; they are very young to send from 
home; they are homesick at times; they hardly 
know how to behave themselves; they shock your 
sense of delicacy; they worry and vex you almost to 



154 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

distraction ; but bear with them, help them, en- 
courage them, love them, for if you do not, who will? 
And what will become of them? And remember 
what a glorious work it is to lift such a young life 
out of its rudeness, its ignorance, its untidiness, and 
make a real man of it. Oh ! friends, suffer these 
words of exhortation, for they come from one who 
has a deep sympathy with you in your arduous, self- 
denying work. 

And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat 
on it from whose face the earth and the heaven fled 
away ; and there was found no place for them. And 
I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God ; 
and the books were opened ; and another book was 
opened, which is the book of life ; and the dead were 
judged out of those things which were written in 
the books, according to their works. And the sea 
gave up the dead that were in it ; and death and hell 
delivered up the dead which were in them; and they 
were judged every man according to his works ■ — 
Eev. xx. 11-13. 



THANKSGIVING DAY. 

November 29, 1888. 

The President of the United States, in a proclama- 
tion which yon have just heard, has set apart this 
29th day of November for a day of thanksgiving and 
prayer, for the great mercies which the Almighty has 
given to the people of our country, and for a con- 
tinuance of these mercies. His example has been 
followed i)v the governors of Pennsylvania and many, 
if not all. of the States, and we may therefore be- 
lieve that all over the land, from Maine to Alaska, 
and from the great lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, the 
people in large numbers are now gathered or gather- 
ing in their places of worship, in obedience to this 
proper recommendation. The directors of ' this col- 
lege, in full sympathy with the thoughts of our 
rulers, have closed your schools to-day, released you 
from the duty of study, gathered you in this chapel, 
and asked you to unite with the people generally in 
giving thanks to God for the past, and imploring his 
mercies for the future. For you are a part of the 
people, and although not yet able, from your minority, 
to take an active part in the government, are yet 

(155) 



156 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

being rapidly prepared for this great right of citizen- 
ship. It is the high privilege of an American boy, to 
know that when he becomes a man he will have just 
as clear a right as any other man, to exercise all the 
functions of a freeman, in choosing the men who are 
to be intrusted with the responsibilities of govern- 
ment. What are some of the things that give us 
cause for thankfulness to Almighty God? Very 
briefly such as these : 

1. Tliis is a Christian country. Although there 
is not, and cannot be, any part or branch of the church 
established by law, there is assured liberty for every 
citizen to worship God by himself, or with others in 
congregations, as he or they may choose, in such 
forms of worship as may be preferred, with none to 
molest or make afraid. Here is absolute freedom of 
worship. And even if it be that the name of God is 
not in our Constitution, nevertheless no president or 
governor or public officer can be inducted or inaug- 
urated in high office except by taking oath on the 
book of God, and as in his presence, that he will 
faithfully discharge the duties of his office. If there 
were nothing else, this public acknowledgment of 
the being of Almighty God and our accountability to 
him gives us an unquestioned right to call ourselves 
a Christian people. 

2. This is a free government, free in the sense that 
the people choose their own rulers, whether of towns, 
cities, States, or the nation. There is no hereditary 



THANKSGIVING DAY. ]_5J 

rule here, and cannot be. We not only choose our 
own rulers, but when we are dissatisfied with them for 
whatever cause, we dismiss them. And the minority 
accept the decision when it is ascertained, without 
doubt, without a question of its righteousness ; they 
only want to know whether the majority have ac- 
tually chosen this or that candidate, and they accept 
frankly, if not cheerfully. We have had a splendid 
illustration of this within this present month. The 
great party that has administered the government 
for four years past, on the verdict of the majority, 
are preparing to retire and will retire on the fourth 
of March next, and give up the government to the 
other great party, its victorious rival. Nowhere else 
in the world can such a revolution be accomplished 
on so grand a scale, by so many people, with so little 
friction. This government then is better than any 
monarchy, no matter how carefully guarded by consti- 
tutional restrictions and safeguards. The best mon- 
archical governments are in Europe : the best of all 
in England; but the governments of Europe have 
many and great concessions to make to the people, 
before they can stand side by side with the United 
States in strong, healthy, considerate management 
of the people. It has been said that the best ma- 
chinery is that which has the least friction, and as 
the time passes, we may hope that our machinery of 
government will be so smooth that the people will 
hardly know that they are governed at all ; in fact, 



]_58 GIEAED COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

they will be their own governors. This time is com- 
ing as sure as Christmas, though not so close at hand, 
and you boys can hasten it by your own upright, 
manly bearing when you come to be men. Never 
forget that this is a government of the majority, 
and you must see to it that the majority be true 
men. 

3. We are separated by icicle oceans from tne rest of 
the world. The Atlantic separates us from Europe 
on the east : the Gulf of Mexico from South America 
on the south, and the great Pacific ocean washes 
our western shores. We are a continent to ourselves, 
with the exception of Mexico, a sister republic on 
the south, with whom we are not likely to quarrel 
again, and the Dominion of Canada on the north, 
which, if never to become a part of ourselves, will at 
least at some day, and probably not a very distant 
day, become independent of the mother country as 
we did, though not at the great cost at which we ob- 
tained our freedom. Our distance from Europe re- 
lieves us entirely from the consideration of subjects 
which occupy most of the time of their statesmen, and 
which very often thrill the rest of the world in the 
apprehension of a general war in Europe. We are 
under no necessity of annexing other territory. We 
are not afraid of what is called " the balance of 
power ; " we have no army that is worthy of the 
name, because we don't need one, and we can make 
one if we should need it; and we have no navy to 



THANKSGIVING DAY. ^59 

speak of, though I think we ought to have for the 
protection of our commerce, when our commerce 
shall be further encouraged. We have no entangle- 
ments with other nations; the great father of his 
country in his Farewell Address warned the people 
against this danger. 

4. Our country is very large. You school-boys 
can tell me as well as I can tell you what degrees of 
latitude and longitude we reach, and how many 
millions of square miles we count. Europeans say we 
brag too much about the great extent of our country; 
but I do not refer to it now for boasting, but as a 
matter of thankfulness to God for giving it to us. 
It means that our territory, reaching from the Arctic 
to the tropics, gives us every variety of climate and 
almost every variety of product that the earth pro- 
duces; and I am sure that the time will come when, 
under a higher agricultural cultivation than we have 
yet reached, our soil will produce everything that 
grows anywhere else in the world. The corn har- 
vest now being gathered in our country will reach 
two thousand millions of bushels. The mind staggers 
under such ponderous figures and quantities. Our 
wheat fields are hardly less productive ; our potatoes 
and rice and oats and barley and grass, the products 
of our cattle and sheep, and, in short, everything 
that our soil above ground yields ; and the enormous 
yield of our coal mines, our oil wells, our natural gas, 
our metals, our railroads, spanning the entire con- 



260 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

tinent and binding the people together with bands of 
steel — all these, and many others, which time will 
not permit me even to mention, give some faint idea 
of what a splendid country it is that the Almighty 
God has given to the American people. And do we 
not well therefore, when we come together on a day 
like this, to make our acknowledgments to Him ? 

5. The general education of the people is another 
reason for thankfulness to God. The system is 
not yet universal, but it will be at no distant day. 
You boys will live to see the day when every man, 
woman and child born in the United States (except 
those who are too young or feeble-minded) will be 
able to read and write and cipher. It is sure to come. 
Then, under the blessing of God, when people learn 
to do their own reading and thinking, we shall not 
fear anarchists and atheists and the many other fools 
who, under one name or another, are now trying to 
make this people discontented with their lot. There 
is no need for such people here, and no place for 
them ; they have made a mistake in coming to this 
free land, as some of them found to their cost on the 
gallows at Chicago. 

6. We have no tear in our country, no famine, and 
with the exception of poor Jacksonville, Florida, no 
pestilence. Famine we have never known, and with 
such an extent of country we have little need to 
dread such a scourge as that. No one need suffer 
for food in our country, and this is the only country 



THANKSGIVING DAY. j[g^ 

in the world of which this can be said ; for labor of 
some kind can always be found, and food is so cheap, 
plain kinds of food, that none but the utterly dissi- 
pated and worthless need starve ; and in fact none do 
starve ; for if they are so wretchedly improvident, 
the guardians of the poor will save them from suffering 
not only, but actually provide them with a home, that 
for real comfort is not known elsewhere in the world. 

Some of us have seen war in its most dreadful 
proportions, but even then the alleviations fur- 
nished by the Christian Commission greatly re- 
lieved some of its most horrid features ; and we are 
not likely to see war again, for there will be hereafter 
nothing to quarrel and fight about. Our political 
differences will never again lead to the taking up 
of arms in deadly strife. 

Such are some of the occasions of thankfulness 
which led the President of the United States to ask 
the people, by public proclamation, to turn aside for 
one day from their business, their farms, their work- 
shops, their counting-houses, to close the schools, and 
assemble in their places of worship and thank God, 
the giver of every good and perfect gift. 

But I don't think the President of the United 

States knew what special reasons the Girard College 

boys have to keep a thanksgiving day. And I 

shall try in what I have yet to say to point out some 

of them. 

1. This foundation is under the control of the 
11 



2g2 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

Board of City Trusts. When Mr. Girard left the 
bulk of his great estate for this noble purpose, he 
gave it to the " mayor, aldermen and citizens of 
Philadelphia," as his trustees. The city of Philadel- 
phia could act only through its legislative body, the 
select and common councils, bodies elected by the 
people, and consequently more or less under the in- 
fluence of one or the other of the great political par- 
ties. Nearly twenty years ago, owing largely to Mr. 
William Welsh, who became the first President of 
the Board of City Trusts, the legislature of Pennsyl- 
vania took from the control of councils all the 
charitable trusts of the city and committed them to 
this board. If any political influences were ever un- 
worthily exerted in the former board it ceased when 
the judges of the city of Philadelphia and the judges 
of the Supreme Court named the first directors of the 
City Trusts. These directors are all your friends ; 
they give much thought, much labor, much anxiety 
to your well-being, desiring to do the best things 
that are possible to be done for your welfare, and to 
do them in the best way. Many of them have been 
successful in finding desirable situations for such of 
your number as were prepared to accept such places. 
I am glad to say that I have three college boys asso- 
ciated with me in my business ; Mr. Stuart had two ; 
Mr. Michener has two; General Wagner has two, 
and Mr. Eawle has had one, and probably other 
members of the board have also, so you see our in- 



THANKSGIVING DAY. \Q^ 

terest in you is not limited to the time which we 
spend here and in the office on South Twelfth street, 
but we are ever on the lookout for things which we 
hope may be to your advantage. 

2. This splendid estate, which you enjoy; these 
beautiful buildings, which were erected for your use ; 
these grounds, which are so well kept and which are 
so attractive to you and to the thousands of visitors 
that come here ; these school-rooms, which we deter- 
mine shall lack nothing that is desirable to make 
them what they ought to be ; the text-books which 
you use in school, the best that can be found ; the 
teachers, the most accomplished and skilful that can 
be procured; the prefects and governesses chosen 
from among many applicants, and because they are 
supposed to be the best, all your care-takers ; all who 
have to do with you here are chosen because they 
are supposed to be well qualified to discharge their 
duties most successfully. The arrangements for your 
lodging in the dormitories, the furniture and food of 
your tables, the well-equipped infirmary for the sick, 
are such as, in the judgment of the trustees, the great 
founder himself would approve if he could be con- 
sulted. Truly, this gives occasion for special thanks- 
giving on this Thanksgiving Day. 

3. You all have a birthright . 

What that meant in the earliest times we do not 
fully know ; but it meant at least to be the head or 
father of the family, a sort of domestic priesthood, 



154 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

the chief of the tribe, or the head of a great nation. 
In our own times, in Great Britain the first-born son 
has by right of birth the headship of the family, in- 
heriting the principal part of the property, and he is 
the representative of the estate. They call it there 
the Jaw of primogeniture, or the law of the first-born. 
In our country there is no birthright in families, 
and we have no law to make the eldest born in any 
respect more favored than the other and younger 
children. 

But you Girard boys have a birthright which 
means a great deal. The founder of this great 
school left the bulk of his large estate to the city of 
Philadelphia, for the purpose of adopting and educat- 
ing a certain class of boys, very particularly de- 
scribed, to which you belong. The provision he 
made for you was most liberal. Everything that his 
trustees consider necessary for your careful support 
and thorough education is to be provided. Nothing 
is to be wanting which money wisely expended can 
supply. This is your birthright. No earthly power 
can take it from you without your consent. No 
commercial distress, no financial panic, no change of 
political rulers, no combination of party politics can 
interfere with the purpose of the founder. Nothing 
but the loss of health or life, or your own miscon- 
duct, can deprive you of this great birthright. Do 
you boys fully appreciate this ? 



THANKSGIVING DAY. ^55 

Now, is it to be supposed that there is a boy here 
who is willing to sell this birthright as Esau did ? 

Is there a boy here who is corrupt in heart, so 
profane and foul in speech, so vicious in character, so 
wicked in behavior, as to be an unfit companion for 
his schoolmates, and who cannot be permitted to re- 
main among them ? Is there a boy here who, for 
the gratification of a vicious appetite, will sell that 
privilege of support and education so abundantly pro- 
vided here ? So guarded is this trust, so sacred al- 
most, that no human being can take it away from 
you : will you deliberately throw it away ? The 
wretched Esau, in the old Jewish history, under the 
pressure of hunger and faintness, sold his birthright 
with all its invaluable privileges ; will you, with no 
such temptation as tried him, with no temptation 
but the perverseness of your own will and your love 
of self-indulgence, will you sell your birthright? Bit- 
terly did Esau regret his folly ; earnestly did he try 
to recover what he had lost, but it was too late ; he 
never did recover his lost birthright, though he 
sought it carefully and with tears. And he had no 
one to warn him beforehand as I am warning you. 

Boys, if you pass through this college course not 
making the best use of your time, or if you allow 
yourselves to fall into such evil habits as will make 
it necessary to send you away from the college — and 
this after all the kind words that have been spoken 
to you and the faithful warnings that have been 



1(36 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

given you— you will lose that which can never be 
restored to you, which can never be made up to you 
in any other way elsewhere. You will prove your- 
selves more foolish, more wicked than Esau, for you 
will lose more than he did, and you will do it 
against kinder remonstrances than he had. 

4. There is another feature of the management 
here which gives especial satisfaction. When a boy 
leaves the college to go to a place which has been 
chosen for him, or which he has found by his own 
exertions, he is looked after until he reaches the age 
of twenty-one, by an officer especially appointed, 
and as we believe well adapted to that service. 
And many a boy who has found himself in unfavor- 
able circumstances and under hard task-masters, 
with people who have no sympathy with his youth 
and inexperience, many such have been visited and 
encouraged, helped and so assisted towards true 
success. 

5. But what is there to make each particular boy 
thankful to-day ? Why you are all in good health ; 
and if you would know how much that means go to 
the infirmary and see the sick boys there, who are 
not able to be in the chapel to-day, not able to be 
in the play-grounds, who are looking out of the 
windows with wistful eyes, very much desiring to be 
with you and enjoying your plays but cannot. God 
bless them. 

You are all comfortably clothed ; those of you who 



THANKSGIVING DAY. ^ftf 

are less robust have warmer clothing, and all of 
you are shielded and guarded as well as the trustees 
know how to care for you, so that you may be trained 
to be strong men. 

You are all having a holiday ; no school to-day ; 
no shop-work to-day; no paying marks to-day; no 
punishments of any kind to-day. Why? It is 
Thanksgiving Day and everything that is disagree- 
able is put out of sight and ought to be put out of 
mind. 

You are all to have a good dinner. Even now, 
while we are here in the chapel and while some of 
you are growing impatient at my speech, think of 
the good dinner that is now cooking for you. Think 
of the roast turkey, the cranberry sauce, the piping- 
hot potatoes, the gravy, the dressing, the mince pies, 
the apples afterwards, and all the other good things 
which make your mouths water, and make my mouth 
water even to mention the names. Then after din- 
ner you go to your homes, and you have a good time 
there. 

The last thing I mention which you ought to be 
thankful for is having a short speech. 




C&n/ 



ON THE DEATH OF PRESIDENT ALLEN. 

September 24, 1882. 

"Remember how He spake unto you." 

These are the words of an angel. They were 
spoken in the early morning while it was yet dark, 
to frightened and sorrowful women, who had gone to 
the sepulchre of Christ with spices and ointments to 
embalm his body. These women fully expected to 
find the body of their Lord ; for as they went they 
said, " Who shall roll us away the stone from the 
sepulchre?" When they reached the place, they 
found the stone was rolled away and the grave was 
empty. And one of them ran back to the disciples 
to tell them that the grave was open and the body 
gone. Those that remained went into the sepulchre 
and saw two men in glittering garments, who, seeing 
that the women were perplexed and afraid, standing 
with bowed heads and startled looks, said, with a 
shade of reproof in their tone, " Why seek ye the 
living among the dead? He is not here, he is 
risen." And, perhaps, seeing that the women could 
hardly believe this, it was added, " Remember 
how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee, 
saying, ' The Son of man must be delivered into the 

(169) 



170 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third 
day rise again." 

The words that are quoted as having been spoken 
by Jesus to his disciples were spoken in Galilee six 
months or more before this, and as they were not 
clearly understood at the time, it is not so very 
strange that they should have been forgotten. 

It had been well if these sorrowing women, as well 
as the other disciples of the Lord, had remembered 
other words, and all the words that the Lord spake 
to them, not only while in Galilee, but in all other 
places. The world would be better to-day if those 
gracious words had been more carefully laid to heart. 

I hope the words of my text will bear, without too 
much accommodation, the use which I shall make of 
them. 

Almost three-quarters of a century ago, a boy was 
born in the family of a New England farmer. It 
was in the then territory of Maine, and near the 
little city of Augusta. The family were plain, poor 
people, and the child grew up, as many other farmers' 
children grew up, accustomed to plain living and 
such work as children could properly be set to do. 
In the winter he went to school, as well as at other 
times when the farm work was not pressing. It 
would be very interesting to know, if we could know, 
whether there was anything peculiar in the early 
disposition and habits of this boy, or whether he 
grew up with nothing to distinguish him from his 



ON THE DEATH OF PRESIDENT ALLEN. ^71 

playmates. If we could only know what children 
would grow up to be distinguished men, we should, I 
think, be very careful to observe and record any 
little traits and peculiarities of their early childhood. 
The boy of whom I am speaking, and whom you 
know to be William Henry Allen, seems to have 
been prepared at the academy for college, which he 
entered at the advanced age of twenty-one years. 
Four years after, he was graduated, and at once he 
set out to teach the classics in a little town in the 
interior of the State of New York. While engaged 
in that seminary, he was called to a professorship in 
Dickinson College, at Carlisle, in our own State of 
Pennsylvania. In Dickinson College he held suc- 
cessively the chairs of chemistry and the natural 
sciences, and that of English literature, until his 
resignation, in 1850, to accept the presidency of 
Girard College. 

From this time until his death, except during an 
interval of five years, his life was spent here. For 
twenty-seven years he gave himself to the work of 
organizing and directing the internal affairs of this 
college, with an interest and efficiency which, until 
within the last year, never flagged. It is not pos- 
sible at this day for any of us to appreciate the 
difficulties he had to encounter in the early days 
of the college, but we do know that he did the work 
well. 

See how he was prepared for the work he did. 



272 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

He was a lover of study. Y/hen only eight years 
old he had learned the English grammar so well 
that his teacher said he could not teach him any- 
thing further in that study. There was an old 
family Bible that was very highly prized by all the 
family, and his father told him that if he would 
read that Bible through by the time he was ten years 
old, it should be his property. The boy did so, and 
claimed and received his reward. That book is now 
in the possession of his daughter (Mrs. Sheldon). 
This early reading of the Bible will, perhaps, account 
for President Allen's unusual familiarity with the 
Scriptures, as evinced in the richness of his prayers 
in this school chapel. 

The school to which he went in his early youth 
was three miles from his father's house ; and in all 
kinds of weather, through the heats of summer and 
the deep snows of winter, he plodded his way. 

I have said that his parents were not rich ; and 
this young man pushed his way through college by 
teaching, thus earning the money necessary for his 
support. This may account for the fact that he 
entered college at the age when most young men 
are leaving it, viz., twenty-one years. It did not 
seem to him that it was a great misfortune to 
be poor; but it was an additional inducement 
to call forth all his powers to insure success. 
He knew that he must depend upon himself if 
he would succeed in life. And so he was not satis- 



ON THE DEATH OF PRESIDENT ALLEN. I 73- 

fied with qualifying himself for one chair in a col- 
lege, but, as at Dickinson, he held two or three 
chairs. He could teach the classics or mathematics 
or general literature, or chemistry or natural sciences. 
Not many men had qualities so diversified, or 
knew so well how to put them to good account. You 
know very well that this liberal culture was not ac- 
quired without hard work. And this hard work he 
must have done in early life, before cares and duties 
crowded him, as they will absorb all of us the older 
we grow. 

" Remember how He spake unto you." I would 
give these words a two-fold meaning — remember 
ichat he said and how he said it. 

Twenty-seven years is a long time in the life of 
any man, even if he has lived more than three-score 
years and ten. In all these years President Allen 
was going in and out before the college boys, saying 
good and kind words to them. 

How often he spoke to you in the chapel ! It was 
your church, and the only church that you could at- 
tend, except on holidays. His purpose was that this 
chapel service should be worthy of you, and worthy 
of the day. So important did he consider it, that 
when his turn came to speak to you here, he pre- 
pared himself carefully. He always wrote his little 
discourses, and the best thoughts of his mind and 
heart he put into them. He thought that nothing 



174 



GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 



that he or any other speaker could bring was too 
good for you. 

And then the tones of his voice, the manner of 
his instruction ; how gentle, kind, conciliating. He 
remembered the injunction of Scripture, " The ser- 
vant of the Lord must not strive." You will never 
know in this life how much he bore from you, how 
long he bore with your waywardness, your thought- 
lessness; how much he loved you. He always called 
you " his boys." No matter though some of you are 
almost men, he always called you " his boys," much 
as the apostle John in his later years called his dis- 
ciples his "little children." For President Allen felt 
that in a certain sense he was a father to you all. 

For some time past you knew that his health was 
declining. You saw his bowed form and his feeble, 
hesitating steps. In the chapel his voice was trem- 
ulous and feeble. The boys on the back benches 
could not always understand his words distinctly. 
But you knew that he was in earnest in all that he 
-did say. And for many months he was not able to 
speak at all in the chapel. On the last Founder's 
Day he was seated in a chair, with some of his family 
■about him, looking at the battalion boys as they were 
drilled, but the fatigue was too great for him. And 
as the summer advanced into August, and the people 
in his native State were gathering their harvests, he, 
too, was gathered, as a shock of corn fully ripe. 

When Tom Brown heard of the death of his old 



ON THE DEATH OF PBESIDENT ALLEN. 1 75 

master, Arnold of Rugby, he was fishing in Scotland. 
It was read to him from a newspaper. He at once 
dropped everything and started for the old school. 
He was overwhelmed with distress. " When he 
reached the station he went at once to the school. 
At the gates he made a dead pause ; there was not a 
soul in the quadrangle, all was lonely and silent and 
sad ; so with another effort he strode through the 
quadrangle, and into the school-house offices. He 
found the little matron in her room, in deep mourn- 
ing ; shook her hand, tried to talk, and moved ner- 
vously about. She was evidently thinking of the 
same subject as he, but he couldn't begin talking. 
Then he went to find the old verger, who was sitting 
in his little den, as of old. 

" ' Where is he buried, Thomas ? ' 

" ' Under the altar in the chapel, sir,' answered 
Thomas. ' You'd like to have the key, I dare say.' 

" ' Thank you, Thomas; yes, I should, very much.' 

" ' Then,' said Thomas, ' perhaps you'd like to go 
by yourself, sir ? ' " 

"So he walked to the chapel door and unlocked it, 
fancying himself the only mourner in all the broad 
land, and feeding on his own selfish sorrow. 

" He passed through the vestibule and then paused 
a moment to glance over the empty benches. His 
heart was still proud and high, and he walked up to 
the seat which he had last occupied as a sixth-form 
boy, and sat down there to collect his thoughts. The 



^76 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

memories of eight years were all dancing through 
his brain, while his heart was throbbing with a dull 
sense of a great loss that could never be made up to 
him. The rays of the evening sun came solemnly 
through the painted windows over his head and fell 
in gorgeous colors on the opposite wall, and the per- 
fect stillness soothed his spirit. And he turned to 
the pulpit and looked at it ; and then leaning for- 
ward, with his head on his hands, groaned aloud. 
' If he could have only seen the doctor for one five 
minutes, have told him all that was in his heart, 
what he owed him, how he loved and reverenced 
him, and would, by God's help, follow his steps in life 
and death, he could have borne it all without a mur- 
mur. But that he should have gone away forever, 
without knowing it all, was too much to bear/ 
' But am I sure that he does not know it all ? ' The 
thought made him start. ' May he not even now 
be near me in this chapel ? ' " 

And with some such feelings as these I suppose 
many a boy will come back to the college and stand 
in this chapel, and recall the impressions he has re- 
ceived from President Allen here. But his voice 
will never be heard here again. Nothing remains 
but to " remember how he spake unto you." 

I am sure you will never forget the day he lay in 
his coffin in the chapel, and you all looked on his 
face for the last time. What could be more impres- 
sive than the funeral ? The crowded house, the 



ON THE DEATH OF PRESIDENT ALLEN. ]_77 

waiting people, the bowed heads, the solemn strains 
of the organ, the sweet voices of children singing 
their beautiful hymns, the open coffin, the appro- 
priate address given by one of his own college boys, 
the thousand and more boys standing in open ranks 
for the procession to pass through to the college gates, 
the burial at Laurel Hill cemetery, where many of 
his pupils already lie, and where many more will fol- 
low him in the coming years — all these thoughts 
make that funeral day one long to be remembered. 

Let us accept this as the will of Providence. 
There is nothing to regret for him ; but for us, the 
void left by his withdrawal. He is leading a better 
life now than ever before. He has just begun to live, 
and the best words I can say to you are, " remember 
how he spake unto you." 

" But when the warrior dieth, 

His comrades in the war 
With arms reversed and muffled drums 

Follow the funeral car. 
They show the banners taken, 

They tell his battles won, 
And after him lead his masterless steed, 

While peals the minute gun. 

"Amid the noblest of the land 
Men lay the sage to rest, 
And give the bard an honored place, 

With costly marble drest, 
In the great Minster transept 

Where lights like glories fall, 
And the choir sings and the organ rings 
Along the emblazoned wall." 
12 



A YOUNG MAN'S MESSAGE TO BOYS. 

December 7, 1884. 

When I came here in April last I brought with 
me some friends, among whom was my son. And I 
said to him that some day I should wish Mm to 
speak to you. He had so recently been a college 
boy himself, graduating at the University of Penn- 
sylvania, and he was so fond of the games and plays 
of boys, and withal was so deeply interested in boys 
and young men, that I thought he might be able to 
say something that would interest you, and perhaps 
do you good. 

At a recent meeting of the proper committee his 
name was added to the list of persons who may be 
invited to speak to you. The last time I was at 
the college President Fetterolf asked me when my 
son could come to address you, and I replied that he 
was sick. 

That sickness was far more serious than any of 
us supposed ; there was no favorable change, and at 
the end of twelve days he passed away. 

My suggestion that he might be invited to speak 

(179) 



180 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

here led him to prepare a short address, which was 
found among his papers, and has, within a few days, 
been handed to me. It was written with lead pencil, 
apparently hastily ; and certainly lacking the final 
revision, which in copying for delivery he would 
have given it. 

I have thought it would be well for me to read to 
you this address ; but I did not feel that I had any 
right to revise it, or to make any change in it what- 
ever; so I give it precisely as he wrote it, adding 
only a word here and there which was omitted in 
the hurried writing. 

He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty ; 
and he that ruleth his spirit, than he that taketh a 
city. — Proverbs xvi. 32. 

I want you to look with me at the latter part of 
each of these sentences, and see if we can't under- 
stand a little better what Solomon meant by such 
words " the mighty" and "he that taketh a city." 

Do you remember the wonderful dream that came 
to Solomon just after he had been made king over 
Israel ? How God came to him while he was sleep- 
ing and said to him, "Ask what I shall give thee," 
and how Solomon, without any hesitation, asked for 
wisdom. And God gave him wisdom, so that he 
became famous far and wide, and people from nations 
far off came to see him and learn of him. 



A YOUNG MAN'S MESSAGE TO BOYS. \g1 

If I were to ask you now who was the wisest man 
that ever lived, you would say " Solomon." Often 
you have heard one person say of another, " he is as 
wise as Solomon." I cannot stop here to tell you of 
the way in which Solomon showed this wonderful 
gift. But his knowledge was not that of books, be- 
cause there were not a great many books then for 
him to read. It was the knowledge which showed 
him how to do right, and how to be a good ruler 
over his people. And because he chose such wisdom, 
the very best gift of God, God gave him besides, 
riches and everything that he could possibly desire. 
His horses and chariots were the most beautiful and 
the strongest; his armies were famous everywhere 
for their splendid arms and armor. He had vast 
numbers of servants to wait upon him, and to do 
his slightest wish. Presents, most magnificent, were 
sent to him by the kings of all the nations round 
about him. No king of Israel before or after him 
was so great and so powerful. And, greatest honor of 
all, God permitted him to build a temple for him — 
what his father David had so longed to do and was 
not allowed, God directed Solomon to do. David's 
greatest desire before he died was to build a house 
for God. The ark of God had never had a house to 
rest in, and David was not satisfied to have a splen- 
did palace to live in himself, and to have nothing 
but a tent in which to keep God's ark. But God 
would not suffer him to do that, although he was the 



Ig2 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

king whom he loved so much. No, that must be 
kept for his son Solomon to do. David had been 
too great a fighter all his life ; he had been at war ; 
he had driven back his enemies on all sides, and had 
made God's people a nation to be feared by all their 
foes. So David was a "mighty man," and while 
Solomon was growing up he must have heard every 
one talking of the wonderful things his father had 
done from his youth up — the adventures he had had 
when he was only a poor shepherd lad keeping hi& 
flocks on the hills about Bethlehem. And how often 
must he have been told that splendid story, which 
we never grow tired of hearing, of his fight with the 
giant Goliath ; and when he was shown the huge 
pieces of armor, and the great sword and spear, he 
surely knew what it was for a man to be " mighty " 
and "great." And when his old father withdrew 
from the throne and made him king, he found him- 
self surrounded on all sides with the results of his 
father's wars and conquests, and soon knew that he 
also was "a mighty man." 

There is not a boy here who does not want to be 
"great." Every one of you wants to make a name 
for himself, or have something, or do something, that 
will be remembered long after he is dead. 

If I should ask you what that something is, I sup- 
pose almost all of you would say, " I want to be rich, 
so rich that I can do whatever I like ; that I need 
not do any work; that I can go where I please.'* 



A YOUNG MAN'S MESSAGE TO BOYS. "[§3 

Some of you would say, " I would travel all over the 
world and write about what I see, so that long after 
I am dead people will read my books and say, 'what 
a great man he was ! ' : Some of you would say, " I 
would build great houses, and fill them with all the 
richest and most beautiful goods. I would have 
whole fleets of ships, sailing to all parts of the world, 
bringing back wonderful things from strange coun- 
tries ; and when I would meet people in the street 
they would stand aside to let me pass, saying to one 
another, ' there goes a great man ; he is our richest 
merchant ; how I should like to be as great as he.' ' : 

And still another would say : " I don't care any- 
thing about books or beautiful merchandise. No, I'll 
go into foreign countries and become a great fighter, 
and I shall conquer whole nations, so that my enemies 
shall be afraid of me, and I shall ride at the head of 
great armies, and when I come home again the peo- 
ple will give me a grand reception ; will make arches 
across the street, and cover their houses with flags, 
and as I ride along the street the air will be filled 
with cheers for the great general." 

And so each one of you would tell me of some 
way in which he would like to be great. I should 
think very little of the boy who had no ambition, 
one who would be entirely content to just get along 
somehow, and never care for any great success so 
long as he had enough to eat and drink and to 
clothe himself with, and who would never look ahead 



284 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

to set his mind on obtaining some great object. It is 
perfectly right and proper to be ambitious, to try and 
make as much as possible of every opportunity that 
is presented. No one can read that parable of the 
master who called his servants to account for the 
talents he had given them, and not see that God 
gives us all the blessings and advantages that we 
have, in order that we may have an opportunity to 
put them to such good use, that He may say to us 
as the master in the parable said to his servants, 
" Well done, good and faithful servant." 

So it is right for you to want to be great, and I 
want to try and tell you how to accomplish it. If 
you were sure that I could tell you the real secret of 
success you would listen very carefully to what I 
had to say, wouldn't you ? Some of you would even 
write down what I said. Then write this down in 
your hearts ; for, following this, you will be greater 
than "the mighty:" "He that is slow to anger is 
better than the mighty ; and he that ruleth his spirit, 
than he that taketh a city." Are some of you dis- 
appointed? do you say, "Is that all? I thought he 
was about to tell us how we could make lots of 
money." Ah, if you would only believe it, and fol- 
low such advice, such a plan were to be far richer 
than the man who can count his wealth by millions. 
But look at it in another way. What sort of a boy 
do you choose for the captain of a base-ball nine or a 
foot-ball team ? What sort of a man is chosen for 



A YOUNG MAN'S MESSAGE TO BOYS. ]^g5 

a high position? Is he one who loses all control 
over himself when something happens to vex him, 
and flies into a terrible passion when some one hap- 
pens to oppose him ? No ; the one you would select 
for any place of great responsibility is he who can 
keep his head clear, who will not permit himself to 
get angry at any little vexation, who rules his own 
spirit — and can there be anything harder to do ? I 
tell you " no/ 

So, I have told you how to be successful, and at 
the same time I tell you, there is nothing harder to 
do ; and now I go on still further, and say you can't 
follow such advice by yourself, you must have some 
help. Is it hard to get? No, it is offered to you 
freely ; you are urged to ask for it, and you are 
assured that it is certain to come to all who want it. 
Will such help be sufficient? Much more than suffi- 
cient, for He who shall help you is abundantly able 
to give you more than you ask or think. It is God 
who tells you to come to him, and he shall make 
you more than " the mighty," greater than he which 
taketh the city ; yes, for the greatness he shall be- 
stow upon those who come to him is far above all 
earthly greatness. He shall be with you when you 
are ready to fly into a furious temper, when you lift 
your hand to strike, when you would Mil if you 
were not afraid ; but when the wish is in your heart, 
yes, then, even then, He is beside you. He looks 
upon you in divine mercy, and if you will only let 



135 GIRAED COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

him, will rebuke the foul spirit and command him to 
come out of you, and your whole soul shall be filled 
with peace. Why won't you listen to his pleading 
voice, and let him quiet the dreadful storm of anger? 
And when the hot words fly to your lips, remember 
his soft answer that turns away wrath. Then will 
you have won a greater battle than any ever fought; 
for you will have conquered your own wicked spirit, 
and by God's grace you are a conqueror. And the 
reward for a life of such self-conquest shall be a 
crown of life that fadeth not away. Won't you ac- 
cept such greatness? 

Such are the words he would have spoken to you 
had his life been spared; and he would have 
spoken them with the great advantage of a young 
man speaking to young men. Now they seem like a 
message from the heavenly world. It is more than 
probable that in copying for delivery he would have 
expanded some of the thoughts and have made the 
little address more complete. Perhaps it would be 
better for me to stop here ; . . but there are a few 
words which I would like to say, and it may be that 
they can be better said now than at any other time. 

I want to say again, what I have so often said, 
that a boy may be fond of all innocent games and 
plays and yet be a Christian. Some of you may 
doubt this. You may believe and say, that religion 
interferes with amusements and makes life gloomy. 



A YOUNG MAN'S MESSAGE TO BOYS. ]_87 

Here is an example of the contrary ; for I do not see 
how there could be a happier life than my son's 
(there never was a shadow upon it), and no one 
could be more fond of base-ball and foot-ball and 
cricket and tennis than he was; and yet he was a 
simple-hearted Christian boy and young man. And 
with all this love of innocent pleasure and fun he 
neglected no business obligations, nor did he fail in 
any of the duties of social or family life. In short, 
I can wish no better thing for you boys than that 
your lives may be as happy and as beautiful as his 
was. 



A TRUTHFUL CHARACTER. 

April, 1889. 

Can anything be more important to a young life 
than truthfulness ? Is character worth anything at 
all if it is not founded on truth ? And are not the 
temptations to untruthfulness in heart and life con- 
stantly in your path ? 

It is most interesting to think that every life here 
is an individual life, having its own history, and in 
many respects unlike every other life. When I see you 
passing through these grounds, going in procession to 
and from your school-rooms, your dining halls and 
your play-grounds, the question often arises in my 
thoughts, how many of these boys are walking in the 
truth ? 

If I were looking for a boy to fill any position 
within my gift, or within the reach of my influence, 
and should seek such a boy among you, I should ask 
most carefully of those who know you best, whether 
such and such a boy were truthful; and not in speech 
merely (that is, does he answer questions truthfully), 
but is he open and frank in his life ? Does he cheat 
in his lessons or in his games ? Does he shirk any 

(188) 



A TEUTHFUL CHARACTER. 189 5 

duty that is required of him in the shops ? When 
he fails to recite his lessons accurately, is he very 
ready with his excuses trying to justify himself for 
his failure, or does he admit candidly that he did not 
do his best, and does he promise sincerely to do better 
in the future ? And is he one who may be depended 
upon to give a fair account of any incident that may 
come up for investigation ? Sometimes there are 
wrong things done here, done from thoughtlessness 
often ; may such a boy as I am looking for be de- 
pended upon to say what he knows about it, in a 
manly way, so as to screen the innocent, and, if 
necessary, expose the guilty? In other words, is he 
trustworthy, worthy of trust, can he be depended on ? 

It may not be easy for one at my time of life to 
say just what a boy ought to be, if he is to make 
much of a man. But we who think much of this 
subject have an idea of what we would like the boys 
to be, in whom we are especially interested. And 
if I borrow from another a description of what I 
mean, it is because this author has said it better than 
I can. 

"A real boy should be generous, courteous among 
his friends and among his school-fellows ; respectful 
to his superiors, well-mannered. He must avoid 
loud talk and rough ways ; must govern his tongue 
and his temper ; must listen to advice and reproof 
with humility. He must be a gentleman. He 
must not be a sneak or a bully; he must neither 



190 GIRARD COLLEGE ADDRESSES. 

cringe to the strong nor tyrannize over the weak. 
To his teachers he must be obedient, for they have 
a right to require obedience of him; he must be 
respectful, because the true gentleman always re- 
spects those who are wiser, more experienced, better 
informed than himself. He must apply himself to 
his lessons with a single aim, seeking knowledge 
for its own sake, and earnestly striving to make 
the best possible use of such faculties as God has 
given him. He must do his best to store his mind 
with high thoughts by a careful study of all that 
is beautiful and pure. In his sports and plays he 
must seek to excel, if excellence can be obtained 
by a moderate amount of time and energy; but 
he must remember, that though it is a fine thing 
to have a healthy body and a healthy mind, it is 
neither necessary nor admirable to develop a mus- 
cular system like that of an athlete or a giant. 
Whatever falls to his hands to do, he must do it 
with his might, assured that God loves not the idle 
or dishonest worker. He must remember that life 
has its duties and responsibilities as well as its 
pleasures; that these begin in boyhood, and that 
they cannot be evaded without injury to heart and 
mind and soul. He must train himself in all good 
habits, in order that these may accompany him 
easily in later life ; in habits of method and order, 
of industry and perseverance and patience. He 
must not forget that every victory over himself 



A TRUTHFUL CHARACTER. \^1 

smooths the way for future victories of the same 
kind; and the precious fruit of each moral virtue 
is to set us on higher and better ground for con- 
quests of principle in all time to come. He must 
resolutely shut his ears and his heart to every foul 
word and every improper suggestion, every profane 
utterance; guarding himself against the first ap- 
proaches of sin, which are always the most insidi- 
ously made. He must not think it a brave or 
plucky thing to break wholesome rules, to defy 
authority, to ridicule age or poverty or feebleness, 
to pamper the appetite, to imitate the 'fast,' to 
throw away valuable time; to neglect precious op- 
portunities. He must love truth with a deep and pas- 
sionate love, abhorring even the shadow of a lie, 
even the possibility of a falsehood. True in word, 
true in deed, he shall walk in the truth." 

I say then to you boys, do your best ; be honest 
and diligent ; be resolute to live a pure and honor- 
able life ; speak the truth like boys who hope to 
be gentlemen ; be merry if you will, for it is good 
to be merry and wise ; be loving and dutiful sons, 
be affectionate brothers, be loyal-hearted friends, and 
when you come to be men you will look back to 
these boyish days without regret and without shame. 

Something like this is my ideal of a boy. I 
am very desirous that your future shall be bright 
and useful and successful, and I, and others who 
are interested in your welfare, will hope to hear 



192 GIKAED COLLEGE ADDKESSES. 

nothing but good of you ; but we can have no 
greater joy than to hear that you are walking in 
the truth. Some of you may become rich men ; 
some may become very prominent in public affairs ; 
you may reach high places; you may fill a large 
space in the public estimation ; you may be able 
and brilliant men ; but there is nothing 'in your 
life that will give us so much joy as to hear 
that "you are walking in the truth." 

Truth is the foundation of all the virtues, and 
without it character is absolutely worthless. No 
gentleness of disposition, no willingness to help 
other people, no habits of industry, no freedom 
from vicious practices, can make up for want of 
truthfulness of heart and life. Some persons think 
that if they work long and hard and deny them- 
selves for the good of others, and do many gen- 
erous and noble acts and have a good reputation, 
they can even tell lies sometimes and not be much 
blamed. But they forget that reputation is not 
character; that one may have a very good reputa- 
tion and a very bad character ; they forget that the 
reputation is the outside, what we see of each other, 
while the character is what we are in the heart. 



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